FDA to declare safe meat and milk from clone animals

[pisshead]

wow, this can only do harm...

FDA to declare safe meat and milk from clone animals

Financial Times | June 22, 2005
By Clive Cookson

Meat and milk from cloned farm animals is about to be declared safe for human consumption by the US Food and Drug Administration, one of the world's most powerful regulatory bodies.

A favourable risk assessment from the FDA is expected to start the commercial exploitation of cloning to improve livestock quality around the world.

FDA officials told the BIO 2005 biotech industry conference they had completed a four-year assessment process and concluded that cloned animals and their progeny would be as safe to eat as conventionally bred animals. They also found that cloning was acceptable from the viewpoint of animal welfare.

Scientists said the first pork and beef from cloned animals could reach the market next year. John Matheson, senior regulatory scientist at the FDA, said uncertainty in the US government about the ethics of animal cloning had delayed publication of the assessment.

But Mr Matheson said he expected the assessment to appear any day.

â??The FDA would want the ethics to go away but there are people with legitimate concerns about the impact of this technology,â?� he said.

At the FDA's request, agricultural biotechnology companies and the livestock industry have been observing a moratorium on the commercial introduction of meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring.

Mr Matheson said this should continue until the assessment had been published and was then revised after a two-month period for public comments. Irina Polejaeva, chief scientist for ViaGen, a leading animal cloning company, said other countries with strong livestock sectors such as Australia and New Zealand were waiting for the FDA assessment.

She said meat from cloned animals could be on sale next year. The public still imagined that animal cloning was an inefficient process that produced unhealthy animals, Ms Polejaeva said. But cloning procedures had improved greatly during the eight years since Ian Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Scotland first used them to produce Dolly the sheep.

Larisa Rudenko, FDA senior biotechnology adviser, said that although cloned animals were more likely to suffer birth defects and health problems when very young, after about 50 days old they were as healthy as animals conceived conventionally. The FDA assessment analysed the biochemical composition of meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring and found it was the same as that from conventional animals.

ViaGen and Cyagra, another US-based livestock cloning company, supplied much of the data for the assessment. Between them, the two companies have produced several hundred cloned pigs and cattle.

In practice most meat and milk would not come from clones themselves, which would be used to improve the agricultural gene pool, but from their progeny. MsRudenko said: â??Clones are for breeding not for eating.â?� Alejandro Cantarelli, Cyagra's chief executive, said a lot of people confused animal cloning with genetic engineering. â??A clone is not a transgenic animal; it is a genetic replica of the founder animal,â?� he said.

Roslin Institute's original Dolly cloning patents are now owned by Start Licensing, a Texas-based company set up in April to find commercial applications for animal reproductive technologies.

pisshead Reviewed by pisshead on 06-23-2005. FDA to declare safe meat and milk from clone animals wow, this can only do harm... FDA to declare safe meat and milk from clone animals Financial Times | June 22, 2005 By Clive Cookson Meat and milk from cloned farm animals is about to be declared safe for human consumption by the US Food and Drug Administration, one of the world's most powerful regulatory bodies. A favourable risk assessment from the FDA is expected to start the commercial exploitation of cloning to improve livestock quality around the world. Rating: 5

[Beeblebrox.420]

Ok, so explain why meat from cloned animals would be bad? Do you know what cloning is, how it works and what is done to perform it? The meat from a normally-raised domestic animal would be completely indistinguishable in every significant manner from the meat from its clone. How could that possibly be unsafe?

[pisshead]

i can't explain it in a few sentences...i've spent a rather long time looking at all sides of this issue, and i cannot reach the conclusion that eating cloned or genetically modified food is good for your health, as opposed to grass fed cows and free range chicken and eggs and organic fruit and vegetables grown without pesticides locally...across the board.

[Beeblebrox.420]

i've spent a rather long time looking at all sides of this issue, and i cannot reach the conclusion that eating cloned or genetically modified food is good for your health...

Then you do not understand cloning. Is it your contention that if a hand-raised, grass-fed, free-range cow is cloned, and it's clone "offspring" is raised in the same manner, in the same environment, on the same feed then the meat from this clone will somehow be worse for you than the meat from its "parent"? Explain this, please. Or at least post links to clinical studies which demostrate this.

[nicholasstanko]

Well I wouldnt be opposed to it if it was 100% safe. I wish that we could have improved our systems for slaughter of animals first. It's really inhumane for real. I love me meat though. Cant beat it... lol.

But seriously. When this takes effect we should push for more aid to third world countries. There is NO danger of animals being extinct from our current practices. With cloned animals then there should be no problem delivering more aid to third world countries that actually need to put on weight.

[nicholasstanko]

Then you do not understand cloning. Is it your contention that if a hand-raised, grass-fed, free-range cow is cloned, and it's clone "offspring" is raised in the same manner, in the same environment, on the same feed then the meat from this clone will somehow be worse for you than the meat from its "parent"? Explain this, please. Or at least post links to clinical studies which demostrate this.

No beeblebrox...deconstructive arguements bad...pisshead good. He did admit that he couldnt explain in few sentences and needed to research more. I'm pretty sure he was talking about the process of engineering a clone and what procedures are used and what effects it would have on the human body (if any).

Please post more if you find it pisshead.

[Beeblebrox.420]

Well I wouldnt be opposed to it if it was 100% safe.

Well, nothing is 100% safe. But I fail to see why cloned meat should be any less safe than meat harvested the traditional way. The only real difference is in the means of conception. One difference of not is the apparent shortening of the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, but it is not believed that these have any other effect than to possibly reduce longevity - natural telomere shortening seems to occur along with aging.

I wish that we could have improved our systems for slaughter of animals first. It's really inhumane for real. I love me meat though. Cant beat it... lol.

The method most widely employed for cattle, pigs, sheep and other large food animals in the US involves driving a short spike into the brain at a high velocity. This kills almost instantaneously. It is highly likely that the animal is dead before it can even feel anything. Despite its gruesome appearance, it's really about as humane as its possible to be.

[Euphoric]

Then you do not understand cloning. Is it your contention that if a hand-raised, grass-fed, free-range cow is cloned, and it's clone "offspring" is raised in the same manner, in the same environment, on the same feed then the meat from this clone will somehow be worse for you than the meat from its "parent"? Explain this, please. Or at least post links to clinical studies which demostrate this.

agreed.
maybe if we replace the term "cloning" with something more user-friendly there would be less arguments against it. u see the word "cloning" and you associate it with certain things, u see?
of course im personally against all factory farming techniques so it doesnt even affect my life.

The method most widely employed for cattle, pigs, sheep and other large food animals in the US involves driving a short spike into the brain at a high velocity. This kills almost instantaneously. It is highly likely that the animal is dead before it can even feel anything. Despite its gruesome appearance, it's really about as humane as its possible to be.

i disagree. there have been numerous reports that ive read that state that this method is not foolproof, or humane. something like 1 in 7 of the cattle are not killed instantly but instead are just really fucked up..

[Beeblebrox.420]

No beeblebrox...deconstructive arguements bad...pisshead good.

No. He said nothing about needing further research. He said only that he could not explain it in a few sentences; I did not ask him to. He can take as many sentences as he needs - I will read it. I also invited him to post links, if he could find them. He must have a reason for reaching the conclusion (or failing to reach the conclusion) he did. I explained my reasons, in considerable detail. I'm now asking the same of him.

So, what's your point again?

[pisshead]

there's no point to it...it's unnecessary. go ahead and eat it all day long...i don't care, all i want to know is if what i'm eating is cloned or not...

it's like...why don't we start cloning trees and planting those...why? let's just use the trees we already have...

not to mention i don't trust the giant cloning/gm food corporations...and the current standard in the meat market, they way they're killed and what they're fed.