Posted on 09/03/2008 12:28:26 PM PDT by BGHater
Food and milk from the offspring of cloned animals may have entered the U.S. food supply, the U.S. government said on Tuesday, but it would be impossible to know because there is no difference between cloned and conventional products.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in January meat and milk from cloned cattle, swine and goats and their offspring were as safe as products from traditional animals. Before then, farmers and ranchers had followed a voluntary moratorium on the sale of clones and their offspring.
While the FDA evaluated the safety of food from clones and their offspring, the U.S. Agriculture Department was in charge of managing the transition of these animals into the food supply.
"It is theoretically possible" offspring from clones are in the food supply, said Siobhan DeLancey, an FDA spokeswoman.
Cloning animals involves taking the nuclei of cells from adults and fusing them into egg cells that are implanted into a surrogate mother. There are an estimated 600 cloned animals in the United States.
Proponents, including the Biotechnology Industry Organization, say cloning is a way to create more disease-resistant animals that produce more milk and better meat. The cloning industry and the FDA say cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as their traditional counterparts.
Critics contend not enough is known about the technology to ensure it is safe, and they also say the FDA needs to address concerns over animal cruelty and ethical issues.
"It worries me that this technology is out of control in so many ways," said Charles Margulis, a spokesman with the Center for Environmental Health. The possibility of offspring being in the food supply "is just another element of that," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Is that why it all tastes like chicken?
I’m starting to look like my Dad!
So, If I order a double cheeseburger will I get a quadruple cheeseburger instead?.........
Send IN the clones. There is nothing wrong with cloned meat or GM food products. Stop trying to constrict our food supply even more!!!
Ah delicious clones, so tasty and fresh...
Does this mean the two inch thick Rib Eyes I put in the fridge will replicate themselves and I’ll never have to buy another one? :-)
Lol. You have no problem with animal and plant DNA mixed together in your food source to create something new?
Enjoy your Frankenfood.
Humanity has been genetically engineering our food for at least 10,000 years.
Every single thing you eat is GM one way or another.
L
I’m talking about inserting DNA one Species into another.
Implying what Mendel did as the same is stretching it.
It's exactly the same.
Put the DNA from a horse into a donkey and you get a mule.
Cross pollinate various grasses and you get wheat, or corn.
Like tomatoes? Every single one has had DNA from other varieties of tomatoes inserted into it somehow.
Dogs? Genetically modified out the wazoo....cat's the same.
This hysterical fear over "GM" foods is Luddite behavior at best and anti-human at worst.
L
Uh, I mix ‘em all in my stomach, anyway. The end product usually looks the same... ‘cept for the corn.
Yup, No Humans, No Corn.
I'm talking about taking a gene from a spider that leads to the production of spider web and putting it into goats so the goats can then be milked for the spider web protein.
Taking a gene from an Arctic flounder and putting it into a strawberry to try to make it frost-resistant.
Taking a human gene and putting it into corn so that the corn contains human antibodies that attack sperm. The idea is to develop the corn as a plant-gel contraceptive that kills sperm on contact.
Totally different than tomatoes breeding with another tomato.
This just makes me hate stupid people even more. The whole purpose behind cloning our food is so that you’ll have something tasty that’s exactly the same as the parent organism. If it’s not then it’s not a true clone.
As for genetically engineering our food, again why not? Like the guy said, we’ve been engineering our food for 10,000 years, we finally get even better at it and suddenly that’s a bad thing? I don’t understand why people view the genome as this holy object never to be touched. Most species bred by cutting their DNA in half and merging it with another (not exactly that but close). Viruses splice foreign DNA into ours all the time, cosmic radiation makes small changes, the genome is changing all the time so why is doing it purposefully for the better so bad?
There is nothing new under the Sun.
How about a Wolf with a Great Dane?
I'm talking about taking a gene from a spider that leads to the production of spider web and putting it into goats so the goats can then be milked for the spider web protein.
Cool. Mass produced spider silk. Lots of industrial and defense applications there.
Taking a gene from an Arctic flounder and putting it into a strawberry to try to make it frost-resistant.
As long as the strawberries don't taste like fish I'm all for it. More strawberries and a longer season. That means cheaper strawberries for me and thee.
The idea is to develop the corn as a plant-gel contraceptive that kills sperm on contact.
Wow. So I can have my sweet corn and wouldn't have needed that vasectomy. What will they think of next?
100 years ago you would have been one of those guys telling Orville and Wilber Wright "If God meant for man to fly He'd have given us wings."
Luddites....
L
I disagree, have a good day L.
* Corn engineered with human genes (Dow)
* Sugarcane engineered with human genes (Hawai‘i Agriculture Research Center)
* Corn engineered with jellyfish genes (Stanford University)
* Tobacco engineered with lettuce genes (University of Hawai‘i)
* Rice engineered with human genes (Applied Phytologics)
* Corn engineered with hepatitis virus genes (Prodigene)1
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