Someone must make decisions for the masses at times. I shudder to think of what people DO eat and feed their kids.

This whole thing is irrelevant, because cloning will never compete with feedlots and pastures when it comes to raising meat.

Cloning is only of interest for increasing breeding stock. You might as well poll people about eating Kentucky Derby winners. Cloned animals are too precious to eat.

I also suspect that this is a mammals/big-brown-eyes issue. What would a poll say about eating cloned bluefin tuna, or lobsters, or truffles? Not to mention that the majority of plants you buy in the nursery are cloned (tissue culture is how nursery stock is built up).

I'm just confused that the exclusion of vegetarians from the study was even worth mentioning. Would a vegetarian possibly believe that cloned animal meat was more OK to eat than non-cloned?

I borrowed your language but it wasn't really aimed at you. Incidentally, you are correct about the administration's anti-science cant.

Labeling doesn't seem harmful but it does seem unnecessary. Those calling for labeling seem right in the general sense but wrong in this specific instance.

Just another example of the fallacy of applying rigid ideology in real life. Cheers.

SDM: The answer is to inform the public as to what they are buying, and educating them as to why cloned food isn't a health risk.

Stewsburntmonkey: But where do you draw the line? Should the label also reflect the location of the animal, the gender, the entire dietary history of the animal, the direction of the sun they were exposed to, the religion of the people who raise the animal, etc. The list could go on forever.

What a completely ridiculous argument. Of course the list can go on forever if you want to be silly about it.

"People have a right to bear arms." says one.

"Oh, so should they get full, unfettered access to handguns, rifles, assault rifles, rocket launchers, tanks and Patriot missiles?" counters the other.

Don't be so actively stupid, Stews.

I agree (even though I'm sure you meant that as a wordy jab at me).

As editor of a blog (downtoearthblog.com) that strives to present balanced and accurate information about food production and food safety, headlines like this one irk me. The FDA did not "disregard results"--the mandate of the FDA is to rule on the science behind food safety and drug safety and efficacy. The FDA's role in labelling is limited to safety and efficacy.

I support consumer's rights and preferences. I am a Farmer's Market vendor, and rely on customers that want to have a closer tie to their food, and care about how it is raised. Labelling for foods derived from clones and their offspring falls into the realm of marketing and USDA programs, just like "organic", "angus", "natural" and "humane". If the demand is there, someone will go to the considerable expense to get a label and track the animals (through multiple generations). Mandatory labelling is not justified, nor does it make sense.

I'm absolutely shocked to so often see purported liberals that clamor about reason and decry global warming deniers perform the exact same mental exercise of "well we can't be 100% sure!" when it comes to food science, vaccines, etc.

I'm still shocked that so many Salon readers have no problem with a government that time after time has shunned science in favor of industry "studies" (global warming? Endangered species protection?) telling them "trust us, it's safe."

But this is only the first step. If companies advertise that their meat isn't cloned (as you pointed out, this is different than labeling meat as "cloned") the industry will lobby to ban labeling food "not cloned." This is exactly what is happening to the dairy industry, most famously to Ben and Jerry's, over their right to label their product "recombinant bovine growth hormone free."

Cloning is crazy expensive at this point, so you would mostly clone an animal to raise it for breeding stock, not directly for meat itself. So imagine you clone a cow. If it ends up being butchered (it wouldn't, it's too valuable as breeding stock, but we're imagining here) it would be labeled as a clone. Would you also label the offspring as clones, even though they were made "naturally" (by copulation, that is)? What about the grandkids? Great-grandkids? When does the label of clone come off?

What about grapes? Do we label them cloned, because they're all descended from a single plant?

What about bananas? Potatoes?

And how do you enforce it? How do you tell the difference between clones and twins? Do we sue farmers who failed to label their cloned cows, when really they just had twin cows?

But wait, focus groups were grossed out by clones, so we need to label them...

What if we asked a focus group the question "Would you like the beef that you eat to be raised in a feedlot, and then butchered at a young age without ever having seen a pasture?"

I think a lot of people would say that's no good.

Just because people have a visceral "ick" reaction to where their food is coming from, doesn't mean that it's relevant. It just means that most people are divorced enough from food production that they simply haven't the foggiest what they're eating, or how it's produced.

Have we got this cloning thing figured out to the point where cloning animals is easier than letting them fuck? Is cloning now more cost effective? Are we able to do it on a large enough scale that we may soon be filling the butcher's case with the flesh of cloned critters?

If so, can we delcare an end to world hunger yet?

Fine, you're not required to label if your food is made from cloned animals.

That shouldn't stop those who use non-cloned animals from advertising that fact.

What's scary is here in PA where the state legislature is trying to pass a law forbidding dairy companies that ban use of Bovine Growth Hormone from advertising their products as hormone free.

That is fucked up.

When the FDA starts trying to stop manufacturers of more "natural" foods from advertising the fact, then we have a problem.