Are Cloned Animals In The Food Supply

[h2]Are we eating cloned animals and drinking their milk?[/h2]

Does the FDA and the USDA allow us to eat cloned animals and cloned animal milk? Most people think information technology is strange if we are eating meat and drinking milk from a cloned animal.  The reply is "Yes" and that there are no requirements for food and products from cloned animals to be labeled equally of yet.

Originally, The Food and Drug Assistants (FDA) originally announced back in Dec. 26, 2006, that meat from cloned cows, goats (and their milk) along with pigs are safety to eat.  However, a study by International Food Information Council in 2006 found that 54 percent of Americans did not want cloned food to arrive in the market [source: Kaplan].

­Past definition, a cloned animal is an exact genetic copy of its "parent."

The process of cloning looks like this: say, a pig — yous take a donor egg from a female grunter and remove the egg's nucleus, where the genetic information lives. then inserted in its place is the nucleus of a cell taken from another pig into the egg. The egg now contains the latter pig's DNA. An electrical electric current then stimulates the egg to brainstorm growing, and the upshot is a genetic re-create, or clone, of that sus scrofa.

­

On January. fifteen, 2008, the FDA finalized its prophylactic ruling, allowing the sale of meat and milk products from the offspring of cloned animals. These offspring aren't considered clones since their cloned parents bred in the natural way. The U.Due south. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as well requested that manufacturers refrain from selling products from bodily cloned animals to allow the market to catch up to the technology. Cloning costs almost $fifteen,000 for a single moo-cow [source: Pacella].

­The FDA appear in September 2008 that cloned meat and milk may already exist in the nation's food supply. What can the consumer do?

Cloned Meat Labeling

Livestock cloning has been going on since at least 1998. In 2003, the FDA issued a voluntary ban on nutrient products from cloned animals and their offspring until the organization could examine the safety issues. According to scientists who researched cloned livestock for the FDA, no distinguishable difference exists between the products of clones and those of non-clones.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/commodity/are-nosotros-eating-cloned-meat/

The milk, meat and other brute products th­at were on store shelves before the 2003 ban were never labeled as coming from clones, and the later on ban relied on voluntary cocky-regulation inside the livestock manufacture. And then, if meat or milk from cloned animals doesn't whet your appetite, how can you avoid bringing it home?

Due to the high cost of cloning, cloned animals are primarily used for convenance purposes. For instance, a milk supplier would clone the cow that produces the well-nigh milk out of the herd and and so use those clones to breed more of the same. The farmer would sell the milk of those offspring, not of the clones themselves, since they would be more than valuable as breeders. As of March 2008, the USDA estimated that at that place were around 600 cloned animals used for breeding in the Usa [source: Knight].

Merely ­the FDA doesn't crave special cloned meat labeling for food manufacturers that sell meat and milk from cloned offspring. Also, at that place'southward no scientific test to determine whether a meat or milk product came from cloned animal lineage. That ambiguity is one of the principal concerns voiced by consumer advocacy groups and people who oppose the FDA'due south motion. At this betoken, it's up to the manufacturers to disclose as much — or as little — as they wish. On the flip side, that may hateful that we could come across more than non-cloned types of food labels from companies looking to capitalize on the public's full general distrust of eating cloned meat.

Due to public concern, at least 13 country legislatures accept introduced bills to crave some blazon of identification on cloned animal products [source: Gogoi]. If the measures pass, they could serve a blow to the livestock and biotechnology industries that see cloning as the future of meat production. Withal, since scientists can't tell the difference betwixt cloned and non-cloned animal meat, enforcing these potential laws would exist difficult every bit well.

For now, if you desire to avert eating food associated with cloned animals, the easiest way is to go organic. In 2007, the National Organic Program, which oversees organic food standards in the United States, ruled that cloned animal products would not meet its criteria. That ways that certified organic foods in the U.s. can't contain cloned animate being products or products from the offspring of cloned animals [source: Knight].

­While this debate continues in the United States, information technology may soon echo abroad. Following the FDA'due south 2008 ruling, the European Food Safe Potency tentatively concurred that cloned food is rubber for consumption but has yet to approve its sale in the European Spousal relationship.

Sources – edited and revised from "How Stuff Works"

• Removed Link on or around July 2016…Gogoi, Pallavi. "States Movement to Label Cloned Food." Business concern Week. March iv, 2008. (Sept. 2, 2008) http://world wide web.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2008/db2008033_119633.htm Kaplan, Karen. "FDA declares cloned meat safe." Los Angeles Times. January. sixteen, 2008. (Sept. 2, 2008) Eating Cloned Animals
• Knight, Bruce I. "Animal Cloning: Transitioning from the Lab to the Market." USDA. March 5, 2008. (Sept. 2, 2008)http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/speeches/content/2008/03/Biotech_Comm_final_3-five-08.pdf
• Ledford, Heidi. "Cloned animals deemed safe to swallow." Nature.com. December. 28, 2006. http://world wide web.nature.com/news/2006/061225/full/061225-3.html
• "Meat, milk from clones' offspring possibly in food supply: U.Due south. officials." CBC News. Sept. 3, 2008. (Sept. 3, 2008) http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/03/cloning-foodsupply.html (removed from website as of x/2015)
• Pacella, Rena Marie. "Your Burger on Biotech." Popular Science. March 17, 2008. (Sept. two, 2008)http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-03/your-burger-biotech
• Ryan, Missy. "Dolly for dinner? Non merely all the same, critics say." Washington Post. Dec. 29, 2006. http://world wide web.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/AR2006122900855.html
• Wanjek, Christopher. "My Big Beef with Cloned Cattle." LiveScience. January. two, 2007. http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070102_bad_clones.html (link also removed from website as of 10/2015)

Relieve

Source: https://chefsville.org/eating-cloned-animals/

Posted by: fleishmanthorm1942.blogspot.com

Share this post