Would You Eat a Cloned Animal?
Larry West observes how the White House is trying to straddle the fence on the recent FDA ruling that cloned animals are safe in the food supply ... by having USDA call for farmers not to rush to action because cloned foods might scare consumers. This concern is borne out by a 2005 Pew survey.
I'm rolling my eyes at part of the hoopla because no farmer in his or her right mind is going to pay what it costs to clone an animal ($15,000 v $2,000 for beef) ... so that it can be killed and sold for our dinner table! Farmers that invest in cloning will, more than likely, clone breeding stock. That means the cost-benefit ratio will stimulate the cloning of males. Once the old boy is past his prime, well, yeah, he'll get turned into hamburger if he is steak-on-the-hoof, so to speak.
There's another economic factor at work. One USDA study reported "that cloned pigs had weakened immune systems compared to normal pigs." Poor health means more costly and, probably, shorter-lives.
As far as the consumption of the offspring (or output, milk, for example), that's another story. I'm annoyed when the two are conflated.
Where's the politics? On the global market, if no where else.
I can't see either the EU or Japan accepting cheese from dairy herds where a cow had a cloned parental unit. I base this deduction on their response to genetically-modified foods (BST milk, to keep to my example). Even so, this scenario is several years down the road, since it takes time to clone an animal, have it grow old enough to serve as a parental unit and then have its offspring grow old enough to produce milk. That said, there are reports that we already have this type of second-degree cloning already in the food supply, due to the use of semen from cloned bulls.
The Humane Society shows that there is domestic politics at play as well:
"Despite the fact that cloned animals suffer high mortality rates and those who survive are often plagued with birth defects and diseases, the FDA did not give adequate consideration to the welfare of these animals or their surrogate mothers in its deliberations," said Wayne Pacelle, The HSUS' president and CEO. "Furthermore, no regulations exist in the United States that protect farm animals during cloning research."
These health facts add to my observations about poor cost-benefit ratios.
The FDA announced in December 2006 that it intended to "approve cloned animals for meat and milk consumption." It's now been 10 years since the first cows were cloned .... in Japan of all places. Sometimes I wonder what problems companies are trying to solve. Too little milk is not one of them. Neither is too little beef.
What will the labeling requirements be? I don't want to eat cloned meat and I don't want to drink milk or eat cheese from cloned cows. How about you?
More from Technorati: Is it safe? Eating cloned and living cloned and Why is the FDA poised to approve cloning?