Cloned Beef on its Way: FDA Okays Cloning Cattle

"FDA says cloned animals safe for food" "The Miami Herald" (January 15, 2007)

A cloned beef sandwich would be expensive, right now. Cloned cattle run about $10,000 to $20,000 a head, compared to the $1,000 for your old-style steer.

With prices like that, cloned cattle will be used for breeding, to produce better beef and more milk: or whatever qualities are wanted.

Good news
Higher-quality food products: particularly after cloning techniques are refined, and economies of scale bring the cost-per-head down.

Bad news
"Researchers Link Cloned Food, [Cancer/Obesity/Heart Disease/Zits]"

Expect more headlines like this, plus

• Talk show hosts discussing the unknown horrors of eating the flesh of cloned animals
• A white-collar industry developing around the production of research that says 'clones kill'
• Cries of Frankenfood! Frankenfood! from the less articulate anti-clone activists

Now, a prediction: Sooner or later, two or three people who ate meat or drank milk that came from an animal with a clone in its ancestry will have heart attacks, or strokes, or come down with some disease.

When that happens, researchers will say "I told you so" while discussing their soon-to-be-released books, and there will be a maelstrom of ill-conceived legislation: particularly if it's an election year.

Take a deep breath

Count to ten, and think calm thoughts.

There may be reason for concern about cloning cattle with desirable traits, and using them for breeding purposes. One 'expert' said that there hasn't been enough research done, and that the FDA is jumping the gun.

It's a fact that the small number of cloned animals we've seen so far tend to be prone to illness and premature death. That's not a particularly good trait for livestock. An 'expert' discussing the the dreadful dangers of cloning named a number of scary diseases that cloned cattle might get.

On the other hand, I doubt whether any amount of research could demonstrate that there are no potential dangers to eating 'cloned beef.' For that matter, I don't think that tofu could be found completely safe: provided the right criteria were used.

Then there's the 'genetically manipulated' fear. I know that some people are scared of food that came from plants or animals that have had their genes changed. I might me more concerned, if I didn't know that people have been eating "genetically manipulated" food for several thousand years.

There's a reason why wheat and rice look different from their wild cousins, and domestic turkeys wouldn't fit in with a wild flock. People have been fiddling with the genes of food animals and plants for millennia. What's changed recently are the techniques we use.

I realize that there could be problems with new approaches to producing food. But, many of the objections I've heard and read seem more Luddite than levelheaded.