FDA calls cloned meats and milk safe!!???

[gribbon]

The only problem I can see with it is that it decreaes the reliability of the food supply, as if livestock were all the same, a new disease would wipe out the lot, but it's same with Monoculture and the wheat fields of the mid-west. But it's not really more dangerous.:hihi: :)

 

Also, what would we do if companies patented the gene sequences that give a meat it's quality? If they made one which was supposedly disease resistant, then they would have complete leverage over our health.:doh:

[TheBigDog]

Also, what would we do if companies patented the gene sequences that give a meat it's quality? If they made one which was supposedly disease resistant, then they would have complete leverage over our health.

I don't know what is going to happen with patenting gene sequences. It is still a long way off for cloning to be more viable economically than traditional breeding. I would imagine that those sequences could be licensed out for generic beef. And other companies would create other sequences that appealed to other tastes. I would think that the fast food industry might be the first to do something like that so they could narrow the variability in their quality.

 

Bill

[Janus]

I’ll join you in your (not entirely) baseless futuristic speculation.

 

I see a future where we’ll have vast extra-terrestrial factories gobbling up Kuiper objects for their carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen (CHON) and trace elements and cranking out vast quantities of non-biologically derived food of every description to feed a human population 1000 times its current size.

 

Hey, so does Frederik Pohl, as per his Heechee series of books.

[CraigD]

Also, what would we do if companies patented the gene sequences that give a meat it's quality? If they made one which was supposedly disease resistant, then they would have complete leverage over our health.:doh:

If the 1997-2004 Monsanto v. Schmeiser series of court cases involving patented plant genes is an indication, the legal implications of patented cloned animal genomes could be ominous, allowing patent holders to make claim to naturally bred descendents of their clone animals.

 

It’s difficult to predict the future of cloned animals, other than that they will likely provide new sources of revenue to members of the legal profession.

[gribbon]

It’s difficult to predict the future of cloned animals, other than that they will likely provide new sources of revenue to members of the legal profession.

 

I suppose....

[Boerseun]

The reason is mass production, and packaging.

 

The ultimate aim is to have all cows look and taste the same, delivering exactly the same quality beef in predictable quantities. This would ease the planning, slaughtering, shipping, and even the sales processes.

 

Problem with this scenario, of course, is that all beef all over will taste exactly the same. Like McDonald's patties. A Mickey D pattie in Beijing taste the same as a Mickey D pattie in Cape Town (Well, almost. But that's what they're aiming at). And this mass-production results in a predictable, though completely soulless and unimaginative (so-called) burger.

 

I read the other day (I need to get a link for this, can't remember whether the link was posted earlier in this thread or if I found it somewhere else) that more than 85% of slaughtered US beef is supplied by only 4 companies. And they get to dictate to the farmers that their livestock must conform to certain standards, because they have to deliver to the supermarket chains who insist on certain qualities and parameters. And cloning will just ease the process, and lower the failure rate of cattle not making the grade. Unfortunately, once again, this practice will push the little guy out of the business who can't afford cloning. But the primary reason for cattle cloning is more a matter of dollars and cents (in ensuring beef quality as supplied to supermarkets, lowering the failure rate will increase profit) than it is a matter of public health, or anything else.

[TheBigDog]

Lets examine the flip side of the question. Lets assume that the FDA had declared cloned meats and milk unfit for consumption. What would that mean to the science of cloning? What would the outrage against the US government be? Hmmm...

 

Bill

[Michaelangelica]

SANET-MG Digest - 13 Jan 2007 (#2007-18)

 

Table of contents:

 

* Draft Documents on the Safety of Animal Clones (2)

 

1. Draft Documents on the Safety of Animal Clones

* Re: Draft Documents on the Safety of Animal Clones

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email protected]>

* Re: Draft Documents on the Safety of Animal Clones

From: "Terry S. Singeltary Sr." <[email protected]>

[CraigD]

Lets examine the flip side of the question. Lets assume that the FDA had declared cloned meats and milk unfit for consumption. What would that mean to the science of cloning?

That there wouldn’t be a market, or possibly a base of production, for them in the US. Since many nations’ counterparts to the USFDA take their lead from it, such a determination would likely not be confined to the US.

 

The impact to the science, I think, would be less than the impact to business. However, recent history has shown that bans on transgen and clones products have had less bottom-line impact on major, diversified business, and to economies as a whole, than suggested by pessimistic predictions. The big losers in such bannings have been small, highly leveraged start up companies dedicated entirely to a single line of research. This is why venture capitalism, though potentially lucrative, is risky.

What would the outrage against the US government be? Hmmm...

The point that “you (the government) can’t please all of the people” is well taken. However, I don’t think government regulators are in the lose-lose situation this aphorism suggests.

 

In the US and other countries, my impression (and, living a couple of miles from the big FDA campus just outside the DC beltway, in a suburb thick with its employees, my impression is, I think, pretty good) of the relationship between business and government regulators is that it’s less adversarial than some imagine. Officers of publicly owned companies are under pressure to produce short term profits at the expense of long-term prudence and safety - many investors don’t care if a company goes down in litigious ruin, so long as they buy in early and cash out before the crash, realizing a good ROI, and they are among those who vote in the boards that hire and fire the officers. Regulators are (except in cases of corruption) outside of this chain of influence, so are in a position to mandate decisions that are actually in the company’s long-term interest, and over which company officers have no control, and hence can be held to little account by shareholders. Regulators and company officers both have an interest in companies’ long-term survival over short term profits, so, in many ways, are more allies than are company officers and shareholders.

[pgrmdave]

The posts beyond this point have been moved to a different thread on corporate ethics. It can be found here:http://hypography.com/forums/social-sciences/10477-corporate-ethics.html

[Racerty1]

The biggest problem i see with cloning animals is resources.

Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, (which might come down eventually, but i cant see it getting below a thousand...) to clone a single cow. when you could get two more mature cows...have two years of closed environment breeding, and get 2 or 3 calfs for like..way less than that price? and you spend even less on food than you would on some of JUST the microscopes they use in the cloning labs. And do you not think that since the animals (everyone cloned so far) has died at a VERY early age that there might be something wrong with the DNA? ill only be fine with this after they find out how to lower cancer rates of red meat ingestion, and get a longer MUCH longer life span in the cloned animals...........Tyler

*Edited for spelling*

[Michaelangelica]

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has announced plans to offer $1 million to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012."

 

In vitro refers to something taking place outside of a living body, in an artificial environment. In this case, PETA wants to encourage the artificial synthesis of animal muscle tissue cultures, without a living animal having to be born and die.

PETA Offers $1 Million Prize to Producer of Artificial Meat

 

Is this ironic? There is something wrong with it I just can't put my meaty (lamb flavoured) finger on it.

[chriswhite]

Call me crazy but i like to wait for the long term studies in these matters

[jab2]

Call me crazy but i like to wait for the long term studies in these matters

Are you satisfied with the results for potatoes, sweet potatoes and grapes? Man has been cloning these food sources for a damn long time, so any negative effects would have manifested itself by now. :lol:

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

without a living animal having to be born and die.-From quote post #29

Ummmmmm.....yeah.....

 

Isn't this exactly what happens no matter what when it comes to all known living things:doh:...Are they saying that it would be better or more moral in some way to entirely prevent the animal's existence in the first place (so it wouldn't have to die:doh:)??? Or is it more along the lines of animals would live forever if we didn't eat em???

 

It's natural for animals to eat plants

It's natural for animals to eat animals

It's natural for some plants to eat animals:hihi:

 

It's soooo hard to take anyone that believes that for humans to engage in natural behavior is to be immoral seriously.:hihi:.

 

Cloned food, Big whup, there are very few foodstuffs you can name that haven't been modified genetically (in a lab, or through generations of breeding) by man in one way or another to produce and reproduce with desired traits (higher yield, more muscle mass, more milk, more eggs etc.etc.).

 

Slap a new term on it and all the sudden it's new and controversial...all that's really changed is the methodology. (technique? Methods?)