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A study by federal scientists has concluded 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. It is likely based on the study made by federal scientists that the Food and Drug Administration will approve such meat and milk for human consumption. The study has attracted considerable media attention (see http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&tab=wn&q=clone+fda&btnG=Search+News), and has given rise to shock and concern.

Why would scientists conclude there is a lack of risk? After all, if you clone a creature, isn’t there something unnatural about it?

To my mind, part of the problem is that cloning is a terrible term. The actual technology should be called twinning. The technology made famous by the sheep Dolly doesn’t xerox a creature. It instead is an expensive process that often fails, but creates a slim chance that identical twins will be born. Because this technology is so expensive and so prone to failure, its unlikely that anyone will eat meat from a cloned animal anytime soon. Simply put, once you’ve gone through the process of creating a cloned animal, it’s too valuable to kill. It’s much more likely that people will eat the offsprings or milk of the identical twins created by the process.

Currently, we don’t worry about whether the steak we are eating or the milk we are drinking was from a cow that was an identical twin or not. Some people say that would change if the identical twin was forced into being by a process like cloning. Yet it doesn’t make difference to the molecular makeup of the animal whether it is an identical twin that arose due to complex processes in a womb, or complex processes in a petri dish, just as it doesn’t make a difference whether a human child arose due to conception in a womb, or conception in a test tube. When artificial insemnination first arose, people thought the human child conceived in a test tube would be somehow different. Time has put that fear to rest.
Interesting things are likely to result from twinning technology. For example, a lot of drugs must now be created by synthetic processes that are expensive and difficult to distribute. You could potentially gene splice a drug into a cow that allowed it to by organic processes produce an anti-malarial drug. With twinning technology you could then create identical twins of that cow and then breed mutliple offspring from such cows. The offspring that carried the spliced gene could be used to create very inexpensive therapies.

Alternatively, you could breed different cows together, and then when the cows have an offspring that produces a particularly high quality milk, you could twin the offspring so that you can create more robust milk producing breeds. Therefore twinning technology could be used in conjunction with the much older technology of breeding.
Regardless of the factual evidence, not everyone would trust such a process. Should such people be kept purposely dark of the source of their food by government mandate? I don’t think so.

Although I don’t think it is proper for the government to ban people from making the decision that such food sources are fine with them, I do think it is proper for the government to require better information be provided to consumers.

Therefore, although I agree with the conclusions of the federal scientists that the meat and milk of cloned animals is safe for human consumption, I would prefer that the source of such food be clearly disclosed. We should be able to know what we ingest, and choose whether or not to ingest it, whether or not we will be rational in making that choice.

Therefore I support the conclusion of federal scientists that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat, but I do not conclude that it should therefore be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling. In fact, I would support that all food in the food supply be labeled as to its origins (farm, factory, etc) and the processes used upon it.

This entry has been filed under tech.