Posted on 02/23/2007 3:07:50 AM PST by FLOutdoorsman
The nation's biggest milk company, Dean Foods, said Thursday it will refuse milk from cloned cows.
The Food and Drug Administration gave preliminary approval to meat and milk from cloned animals and could grant final approval by the end of the year. Federal scientists say there is virtually no difference between clones and conventional cows, pigs or goats.
Smaller companies such as Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and Organic Valley previously have said they oppose milk from clones. Dallas-based Dean Foods is a $10 billion company that owns Land OLakes and Horizon Organic, among dozens of other brands. In a statement issued Thursday, the company said its customers and consumers don't want milk from cloned animals.
‘‘Numerous surveys have shown that Americans are not interested in buying dairy products that contain milk from cloned cows and Dean Foods is responding to the needs of our consumers,'' the statement said.
Milk companies worry that concern over cloning could turn people away from dairy products. So far, public opinion appears mixed. A September poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64 percent of respondents were uncomfortable with animal cloning. And a December poll by the University of Maryland found that the same percentage would buy, or consider buying, such food if the government said it was safe.
Dean Foods spokeswoman Marguerite Copel said the company respects the FDA, ‘‘but we've got a customer and consumer base.''
The company did not say whether it would use milk from the offspring of cloned animals. Cloning companies say the purpose of cloning is not to put many cloned livestock into the food supply. Instead, the goal is to make a genetic copy of a superior animal and then put its offspring into the food supply.
They never asked me about cloned milk. It is not like they were produced by an atomic merger.
Think of how many cows get the long glove to procreate today. Cloning is just one step sooner.
This is ridiculous. Milk is milk. What's next? No milk from cows that are not contented?............
How about "NOT MILKED BY HAND"?
I think you are right. Cloning is expensive, why would dairy farmers do that?
True, but then again so much in advertising is.
I don't have a problem with a company deciding on its own to do this. Let the market decide.
I'm sure the dairy farmers will tell the milk companies that they have cloned cows in their herds.....sure they will. ;-)
People who refuse to drink milk from cloned cows are probably the ones who buy only "organic" foods.
We only buy organic milk, meats and eggs. I don't buy organic produce, but I refuse to buy the meats/dairy that have been shot full of steroids, growth hormones and antiboitics.
Instead of having a herd with one Betty, one Mary, one Cathy, two Junes, and a Sally who all are different weights, different heights, different lengths and all produce different amounts of milk each day it would be much easier to have a herd of all Bettys. All the same size, same weight and all producing the same amount of milk. The feed differences disappear, the medical requirement differences vanish, etc.
Costwise, once the herd is established it would be cheaper to maintain full production.
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