According to CNN, the FDA has approved ingestion of meat and milk from cloned animals as food. They say there is no difference between cloned animals and non-cloned animals, and furthermore say that they cannot even require that cloned meat be marked as such (though sellers are free to advertise that their product is not cloned).
Congress is none too happy with this, claiming that the FDA rushed to approve cloned food, and that if the FDA missed something (which they are known to do) it will be too late to remove it from the food supply.
I’m a little concerned about it myself. While it seems that cloned animals would be the same as any other animal, I’m hardly qualified to make that determination, though some questions do come to mind. For example, if an animal which is cloned has some type of disease which is not detected (or possibly some disease that all animals in that species carry naturally) will the disease mutate with cloning and somehow become dangerous to humans? The truth is, I don’t know. However, for that reason, I’m not real keen on eating it.
Luckily, due to the cost of cloning, this will not be an immediate concern. However, it is something which needs a lot more scrutiny than it has been given thus far. One problem I foresee, even if there is no health risk, is that food marked as not being cloned will become far more expensive.
This situation is definitely worth watching. I’m not freaked out about it by any means, but I am interested to hear more from scientists. Either way, I think we have a right to know if our meat came from a clone, so we can make our own decision about whether to partake in it. If it is not marked as such, I think a case could be made that the public is being defrauded.
