FDA approves cloned meat for human consumption

[SUBMAN1]

uhhh.... I'll pass thanks! I might go vegitarian if this product shows up in my local supermarket. I mean, what is wrong with meat made the old fasioned way anyway?

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01776.html

-S

[seafarer]

I don't understand the whole controversy in the first place. What possible harm do people envision from eating meat from a cow born from a cloned parent (or eating the actual clone in the first place)? In the NYTimes, Stephen Sundlof, director of the F.D.A. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition is quoted as saying:

“It is beyond our imagination to even have a theory for why the food is unsafe,”

And that's the point. There is no biological, nor rational basis for even hypothesizing that such meat would be any different to eat then any other meat. And especially since the meat producers are talking about selling the meat from the natural offspring of a cloned animal (since the clone is highly valuable as a breeder of whatever desirable characteristics that warrented cloning it in the first place - nobody is talking about slaughtering herds of clones, they'd go bankrupt doing that).

It seems to be a bunch of mindless hype from fundamental religious groups and others with ethical concerns, but no real understanding of what they are against.

[SUBMAN1]

Its genetic code has been changed, so in about 5 years, they will figure out that they accidently created and introduced into the human food chain some form of super form of the prion protein, and we will all die from BSE, or CJD disease or something. That is why I hold my reservations. THere is no reason to clone meat in my opinion.

-S

[seafarer]

Actually, no, their maternal genetic code has not been changed at all. And the adult clone is mated in the, usual, way. So the offspring are in fact genetically different by the mere fact that they are the product of a natural mating with the normal course of genetic mixing that any mammalian sexual being is the product of.

The clone itself does not have an "altered" genome - it has an exact duplicate of it's mother's adult genome. Cloning, by the process that the famous dolly was produced by, does not alter the genetic makeup. That's the very point - it preserves the genetic makeup of an animal with desired traits.

There are mechanisms that can allow the insertion (or deletion) of genetic material into a clone, but that is not the process that is being talked about by these food producers.

I think you are thinking of the process of say, making a cow (or pig or whatever) that produces some chemical that gets concentrated in their milk. Sure, those kinds of animals can be "made" too, and do use a form of cloning technology in their production. But that is not what the meat marketing producers are talking about.

As I say, there is a tremendous amount of mis-understanding about cloning, what it is, what it can be used for and so forth. But, just looking at the pure technology of cloning a mammal - that process DOES NOT alter the genetic material.

The process of altering the genetic material uses recombinant DNA technology, which then goes on to make a clone using the altered genome to propogate it.

Recombinant DNA technology is then dependent on making a clone to propogate the modified genome, but cloning can be done in the absence of any recombinant DNA manipulation.

[SUBMAN1]

Wrong! It has already been proven that Dolly wasn't a perfect clone and had major medical problems and died at an early age of 6 yrs old.

So whomever is buying into the fact that she was a perfect clone was only looking at her from a skin deep perspective. This means the techology is also not perfect and at some point, you will create something deadly and dangerous such as a prion protein and intruduce it to humans - nice. :down:

-S

[Zayphod]

I don't understand the whole controversy in the first place. What possible harm do people envision from eating meat from a cow born from a cloned parent (or eating the actual clone in the first place)? In the NYTimes, Stephen Sundlof, director of the F.D.A. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition is quoted as saying:

“It is beyond our imagination to even have a theory for why the food is unsafe,”

And that's the point. There is no biological, nor rational basis for even hypothesizing that such meat would be any different to eat then any other meat. And especially since the meat producers are talking about selling the meat from the natural offspring of a cloned animal (since the clone is highly valuable as a breeder of whatever desirable characteristics that warrented cloning it in the first place - nobody is talking about slaughtering herds of clones, they'd go bankrupt doing that).

It seems to be a bunch of mindless hype from fundamental religious groups and others with ethical concerns, but no real understanding of what they are against.

For the same reason, I never could understand the difference between an organic apple and any regular apple. Chemically, they're exactly the same. The only difference is the price. To certain people, "organic" is better, but you'd be hard-pressed to find the difference in the final product, i.e., one apple is the same as the other apple, no matter what you fertilized it with.

I had someone mentioned their distrust of microwave ovens some months ago, saying it might make the food radioactive. I had to explain the different ends of the EM spectrum to him, and the fact that there is no Radium anywhere in the oven.

Another guy called in to ask about an Atomic Watch (we sell watches where I work), asking if there was any danger of the radiation leaking from the watch. Of course, it's got a small radio receiver in it to receive time signals from the clock in Fort Collins, Colorado, but his impression was that since it was an "atomic watch", there must be some piece of U235 or U238 in there to power the watch.

Yes, we all got a good chuckle out of it after advising him that U235 wasn't used in watches - it had been discontinued in favor of several variations of isotopes of Plutonium. Yes, people like that breed. :roll:

[antikristuseke]

Dolly did not die because it was a clone.
This from a wikipedia entry, allso checked the cited sources there.
Dolly did not die because of being a clone: an autopsy confirmed she had Ovine Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma (Jaagsiekte), a fairly common disease of sheep caused by the retrovirus JSRV. Roslin scientists stated that they did not think there was a connection with Dolly being a clone and that other sheep on the farm had similar ailments. Such lung diseases are a particular danger for sheep kept indoors and Dolly had to sleep indoors for security reasons. However, some believe the reason for Dolly's death was that she was actually born with a genetic age of 6 years, the same age the sheep from which she was cloned. One basis for this was that Dolly's telomeres were short, typically a result of the aging process.

[jumpy]

Yer, Dolly was cloned from a 6 year old sheep, ergo when the clone was born she was already 6 years old?

Common sense tells me that anything using tinkering with dna is most likely speculation. Let me explain.
Scientists say 'oh, this is junk dna, we don't need to worry about it.' they only say this because thay haven't figured out what it actually does yet.

Until you understand something completely, how can you say whether or not any part of it is redundant/useless or whatever?
When we figure out how dna works in its entirety for the 'thing' we are modifying (like foodstufs, be they animal or plants) then perhaps I'll be convinced that it's safe to eat, without causing my children to be born with two heads!

You only hvae to look at the result of well meaning scientists and their meddling with animal feed - 'I know! Lest grind up dead animals mix it with some other plant based stuff and turn them into cattle feed pellets!' Kill 2 birds with 1 stone: make money and more animal feed. What they didn't know was the result of feeding crushed spinal matter and the like back to animals which are evolved to eat plants - contamination of the food chain leading to transmittal of BSE in cattle to humans.
Score one for science.... not.

[antikristuseke]

Well, concidering that we know how aging works we can indeed say that dolly was 6 years old at birth, at least in some respect. Anyway what governs aging is tolomere, a sequense in the dna that becomes shorter every time the dna molecule is copied, limiting the ammount of times it can do so. Because the sheep Dolly was cloned from was 6 year sold and therefore had allready lost 6 years owrth of telomere from its dna chain dolly had a shorter life than a completely naturaally born sheep would have.

[SUBMAN1]

That may be what killed her, but if you the genetic abnormalities continue, and nature continues with its habit of mutating, especially when the telomeres of a cell are gone resulting in permanent mutation and loss of genetic information, so I will not ever trust it.

-S

Here is another take on it:

Meat and Milk From Cloning Are Safe?


http://bp0.blogger.com/_V9FZXQn2pok/RZBDDK7-g0I/AAAAAAAAABA/1Ww3ccuEXRI/s200/Darlenes-calf.jpg

"Meat and milk from cloning are safe, 2 FDA scientists say. The study, which deems labeling unnecessary, signals the agency's receptiveness to formally approving such food.”

This was a recent headline in the LA Times on December 23rd, 2006. The report goes on to explain, “A long-awaited study by federal scientists concludes that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat and should be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling.” This study is no more than a review of information provided by the cloning industry as pointed out in the LA Times article “Two of the largest studies were provided by commercial clone producers Cyagra Inc. and ViaGen Inc.”

I guess most individuals would be surprised that the FDA relies on the manufacturers of chemicals, and now cloning companies, to show the safety of new additives into our food supply. According to the investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald in his book The Hundred-Year Lie, quoting Jerry Avorn, a physician with the Harvard Medical School:

“There is a comforting shared myth that by the time the FDA approves a new drug [and apparently cloned meat], the product has been studied exhaustively and determined to be a worthwhile new addition, and that all of its actions in the body, good and bad, are well defined… In fact none of these assumptions is quite correct. The FDA itself does not study any drugs prior to approval, relying on the company that makes the product [cloned meat and dairy in this instance] to generate that information.”

Our government depends on safety data supplied by the drug manufacturers [and the cloning industry] to make its approval decisions. To [Marcia] Angell former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, relying on the drug companies “for unbiased evaluations of their products makes about as much sense as relying on beer companies to teach us about alcoholism.”

I bring this up just to point out the dangerous methods used by the FDA to approve substances in our food supply. Fitzgerald goes on to explain, “Commenting on the public perceptions of objectivity and safety afforded by the FDA, and FDA commissioner, Herbert Lay, made this revealing statement in 1969, which still holds true today: ‘The thing that bugs me is that people think the FDA is protecting them. It isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night an day.’”

The LA Times article goes on to quote a few of the skeptics “The FDA ‘has been trying to foist this bad science on us for several years,’ said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Food Safety in Washington. ‘When there is so much concern among so many Americans, this is really a rush to judgment.’… Kimbrell, said too few animals had been cloned to conclude that they were safe to eat. He also called for more independent research provided by companies that are not in the cloning business.”

“A study released this month by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64% of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning and 43% believed food from clones was unsafe.”

The Industry Goes Forward

Despite public concern, companies, with our FDA’s approval, go forward with their profiting schemes and new science. They will get away with it by keeping the public ignorant of the facts. By not labeling cloned meat or GMO foods, our general public can walk on blindly about our food supply, with the myth that the FDA is taking care of us. They have eliminated our right to choose what we eat. If the public knew that most every processed food in America contains some GMO ingredients, we might make the choice not to consume those products. If the FDA requires cloned meat or cloned milk to be labeled, I doubt if the public would choose those products as well. However, we can go about our lives, because “ignorance is bliss”, believing the myth that Big Brother loves his citizens more than the industrial dollars of multinational corporations.

Is this a democracy or is it facism? If the public is concerned about our food supply and our rights as citizens, we need to contact our legislators and the FDA letting them know that we want our food labelled, we want the right to choose. We want our representatives to listen to our voices and to not just go forward with industry agendas depite our concerns. It is time to get active and to end the final stages of corporate take over of our food supply, before it is too late. Our children will never have the freedoms that we enjoy today.http://homesweetfarm.blogspot.com/2006/12/meat-and-milk-from-cloning-are-safe.html

[bookworm_020]

So the lamb is going to be mutton?:hmm: Is it realy cheaper to do it this wasy compared to the old fashioned methods?

[jumpy]

So the lamb is going to be mutton?:hmm:

lmao! that's a good one :lol:

[STEED]

I am so glad I don't eat meat. :p

They better bloody lay of doing the same thing to fish, I love fish.









Watch out Skybird here I come, 9000 posts. :lol:

[antikristuseke]

That may be what killed her, but if you the genetic abnormalities continue, and nature continues with its habit of mutating, especially when the telomeres of a cell are gone resulting in permanent mutation and loss of genetic information, so I will not ever trust it.

-S

[/url]

When the telomere is gone the cell will not reproduce itself and basicaly the animal will die. Besides permanent mutations occur all the time and most dont do anything at all, then there are a bunch of harmful mutations and finally the smallest partare beneficial mutations (beneficial is incredibly subjetive). Im not exactly sure what you mean with loss of genetic information thing.

[SUBMAN1]

That may be what killed her, but if you the genetic abnormalities continue, and nature continues with its habit of mutating, especially when the telomeres of a cell are gone resulting in permanent mutation and loss of genetic information, so I will not ever trust it.

-S

[/url]
When the telomere is gone the cell will not reproduce itself and basicaly the animal will die. Besides permanent mutations occur all the time and most dont do anything at all, then there are a bunch of harmful mutations and finally the smallest partare beneficial mutations (beneficial is incredibly subjetive). Im not exactly sure what you mean with loss of genetic information thing.You would have to argue with my ex biology teacher - the cell does not die. It can actually reproduce still and possibly turn cancerous or mutate. I've never heard the dying part before (though I'm sure if you nick the wrong gene, it could happen), unless you know something I don't. This is one reason why your body is designed to seek out and destroy these mutant genes, and one reason why cancer spreads easily later in life.

-S

[Skybird]

I am realistic and know that the selling of gen-food and now clone-food will spread. I am against it, but i cannot help it. No consumer ever told the companies to invest in that, but they did, unwanted, and now want to enforce it onto us for their precious profits.

However, what I really hate and get hot about is: what lying efforts are taken by the EU as well as national law makers and politicians to prevent that clear marking of such food is obligatory to be practiced. In germany, yes, gen-food needs to be marked as that - but only in the smallest of smallprint, and only when certain treshhold levels are surpassed, and only when the genetic manipulation in the vegetable for example did not exceed a certain limit. Even more, such changed products even can be misleadingly labelled as "bio" food! we have a "consumer protection ministry" in germany. It really does honour to it's name: it successfully protects the industry against consumers. they want to shove the sh!t down your throat against your will, and without you being able tell.

"If you meet politician, kill politician" - nine out of ten are telling lies the moment they open their mouths, and they will appeal to the lowest of man's instincts, and they will sell you easily and all too willingly if they have a profit from it.

No gen food and no clone food over here, thanks. At least as far as I can tell by the intentionally misleading labels.

[Stealth Hunter]

Unfortunately, clones do have shorter lifespans than normal creatures. They're definitely not the same as naturals, but what causes them to die we can't be sure of. For instance, to perfect Dolly, over 200 attempts were made. And that's not all:

Seventy calves have been created from 9,000 attempts and one third of them died young; Prometea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometea) took 328 attempts. Notably, although the first clones were frogs, no adult cloned frog has yet been produced from a somatic adult nucleus donor cell.

I'm skeptical about cloning food... there's definitely a downside to it somewhere along the line...

[seafarer]

So the lamb is going to be mutton?:hmm: Is it realy cheaper to do it this wasy compared to the old fashioned methods?

The general plan of a breeder is to determine what are, say, the top 1% of his breeding stock. Then, clone only those top 1% animals, and use the clones to mate and produce normal (usually via artificial insemination) sexually reporduced offspring. Those offspring are the ones that would be raised and sold at market for slaughter.

So, regardless of your feelings on clones, you would still be buying meat made "the old fashioned way".

The breeder would replace his clones from frozen embryo's taken from the original 1%. In order to avoid inbreeding depression, he would periodically outbreed some animals with a different male, and then again reselect the best breeders from that to replenish his clone stock.

The cost saving is foreseen to be in the ability to select only the very best breeders, and then focus exclusively on them via cloning. It removes a lot of the money lost due to the variable breeding success in a variable herd.

Actually, as a business model, it still remains to be proven effective. And there will be a need for breeders to be careful not to deplete whole breeds or strains of animals of too much genetic variation (although most commercial farm animals are already highly inbred, deliberately so, by selective breeding). But they also keep things genetically mixed up somewhat by normal sexual reproduction (and its inherent recombination) of the market stock, and periodically re-selecting the breeders for cloning from that.

[antikristuseke]

That may be what killed her, but if you the genetic abnormalities continue, and nature continues with its habit of mutating, especially when the telomeres of a cell are gone resulting in permanent mutation and loss of genetic information, so I will not ever trust it.

-S

[/url]
When the telomere is gone the cell will not reproduce itself and basicaly the animal will die. Besides permanent mutations occur all the time and most dont do anything at all, then there are a bunch of harmful mutations and finally the smallest partare beneficial mutations (beneficial is incredibly subjetive). Im not exactly sure what you mean with loss of genetic information thing.You would have to argue with my ex biology teacher - the cell does not die. It can actually reproduce still and possibly turn cancerous or mutate. I've never heard the dying part before (though I'm sure if you nick the wrong gene, it could happen), unless you know something I don't. This is one reason why your body is designed to seek out and destroy these mutant genes, and one reason why cancer spreads easily later in life.

-S

It is very possible i was wrong there, its really late here and im tired. Ill get back to this after i have rested and iv had time to read up on the issue.