FDA has approved cloned animal consumption
Moms View Message Board: The Kitchen Table (Debating Board): FDA has approved cloned animal consumption
Are you ready to eat meat from a cloned animal or drink its milk?
I for one, am not. I don't agree with cloning and I do not want to eat meat from a cloned animal. I really do not see the point in cloning animals; period.
The FDA should at least give the consumer a label on this product indicating that it is from a cloned animal. However, as far as I read on the subject, the industry will not have to provide this notice.
What do you all think about this topic?
I completely agree with you. I am totally against cloning. Period. I do not trust cloned meat or milk, and I do not want to consume it. I really think that it should be clearly labeled, also, though it probably won't be...
I also agree. That is messing with nature in the worst possible way. When you consume these animal products, how do you know that it won't play havoc with your own cellular structure, too? It is just wrong.
I would think that it is more expensive to clone an animal than it is to just breed it. I think it's just an excuse to put us one step closer to cloning humans. When that happens, I believe, is when God will put an end to everything here on Earth. That is the height of arrogance, to think that WE can create life!! Pride (trying to be equal to God) is what got Lucifer kicked out of Heaven, and Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
ick - I agree Annie, and I bet the products that don't use cloned animals will have their products labeled (like buying milk now without growth hormones in it).
I suspect that public outcry will cause the FDA to change it's mind. I also suspect that there will be very little cloned meat on the market for a long time to come. The process is very expensive at present. And, from everything I've read, when a cell is taken from an adult animal and cloned, the cloned animal takes on all of the characteristics of the donor animal, including the aging process. That is, the cloned animal will age faster. Our cells change as we get older and the signals change, and this will be part of the cloned animal.
But personally, I don't see a huge ethical difference between this and the present system of "mechanically" fertilizing especially desirable female animals with the sperm of males carrying especially desirable traits.
Something that comes up in the science fiction I read is using medical/veterinary science to breed a huge creature that is all meat/muscle, kept alive by a nutrient bath and other artificial means, that is constantly growing and can constantly be "harvested" as a source of meat without actually "killing" an animal. Don't know how I feel about it, but it is a concept that has been discussed. I would not be surprised to see science moving towards something like that.
As for the FDA, I think we will see some changes in how the FDA, the EPA, and other government agencies operate in the next Congress. These agencies and others have been issuing regulations right and left to relax regulations and give industry a free hand, and I think the new Congress will take some steps to halt and reverse this pattern. Including labeling on foods. If you want something to be really concerned about, several states have very strict labeling requirements for packaged food ingredients, much stricter than other states - much like California having much stricter emission standards for cars than most other states. There was a move in the recent sessions of Congress to have a nation-wide, federal standard (brought about by industry lobbying) and the proposed federal standards would (a) be much less strict than those of the strictest states and (b) would over-ride the standards of those states. There was also a move to set federal standards (much less stringent) for things like lead wastes in water, mercury, soot emissions, and similar waste management matters, again over-riding the strict standards in some states. And this, too, will change, I suspect, in the new Congress.
Personally, I can't get too upset about cloned animals, except as another example of industry getting what it wants because of the way decisions have been made in the last several years in government agencies charged with oversight for safe food, medicine, air, water, etc.
I worry about eating cloned meat from a health perspective. Cloned animals at this stage end up not quite right and dying early. That scares me.
Interesting Ginny about the nationwide standards. From someone who has moved state to state, boy would that be nice. In ohio our car only had to have e checks every other year if they were new cars, but here it is yearly, no matter what we did in Ohio, so we had our emissions tested in april and moved in may and i had to chip out 70 dollars for a new test. So being in a strict state wouldn't stress me if it became less strict, IF there was a nationwide plan.
I guess I feel like some of the states go overboard with labels and warnings, and some don't do enough, I would be very happy to see a nice medium.
Just like car seat laws, if they were consistent state to state, education would be easier. Right now dr's who go to semimars only hear that states laws. If it was nationwide, it would be so easy to get info out, but yes there are some states that are very strict that would likely be lessened. But I believe there are still some states that the LAW for carseats ends at age 2!
I have no concerns about eating such meat.
Frankly, I'm with Ginny in her last sentence. Cloning simply reproduces what farmers already have. It's good old-fashioned selective breeding that has produced a lot of horrors. Pigs that can never go outside because they have no body fat and are so nervous a slamming door can have them drop dead with fright. Apart from that, standard practices like anti-biotics given simply to produce faster growth endanger us far more then cloning. And messing with nature? Would that include clipping off chickens' beaks and confining them to cages for life?
It's a little like obsessing over a scratch in the windshield when your engine and transmisson are about to fail.
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