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FDA: Cloned livestock is safe to eat

emw

emw

macrumors G4
Original poster
Aug 2, 2004
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Link.

The FDA gave preliminary approval Thursday to meat and milk from cloned animals or their offspring. Federal scientists found virtually no difference between food from clones and food from conventional livestock.

The government believes "meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day," said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine. Meat and milk from the offspring of clones is also safe, the agency concluded.
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Anyone have information on how much cheaper it is to have a cloned herd of cows vs. a naturally bred herd? Surely you can create more cows more quickly than you can breed them naturally, but the ongoing support costs must be the same. Of course, if the main objective is to use clones for breeding, I see even less of a benefit, given the potential consumer backlash against it right now.

Cloning companies say the technology would be used primarily for breeding and not for steak or pork tenderloin. Thus, consumers would mostly get food from their offspring and not from the clones themselves.
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Just trying to understand the financial benefits of cloning in this scenario.
 
Counterfit said:
Well, they still have to go through the normal gestation period, I'm not sure how much time they save.
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I guess my thought there was that one cow could have one calf in any given gestational period, whereas you could likely clone many more in that same timeframe.
 
I'm not real keen on this "no label" idea. I want to know if the meat I'm eating (or milk, or eggs, or cheese) came from a natural animal vs. the product of genetic/biological tinkering.
 
emw said:
I guess my thought there was that one cow could have one calf in any given gestational period, whereas you could likely clone many more in that same timeframe.
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The cloned cows still have to go through the same process...one calf from one cow in one gestational period.
 
I think the benafit for us and the cattle ranchers is the "quality" of the product. Ranchers (and humans in general) for years upon years have selected the best two animals, and attempted to get them to mate to produce a superior second generation. The exact same thing is done with plants (that's how you get seedless fruit). The difference is that now instead of waiting for a an animal to grow up, and see it's many attributes, you can genetically make those modifications before birth, instead of waiting generation upon generation.

Humans have been breeding for genetics for a very very long time. That's how the lapdog came about, in all it's ug...errr.... "cute" renditions.

Genetic cattle is just a faster more scientific way of doing what we've always done.

~Tyler
 
I don't see what the concern is to the consumer
they are not changing the DNA of the cows they are just photocopying them, yes the cows are going to be more vulnerable to epidemics because of the same DNA but its nothing new, like on of the above posters said virtually all market cattle are AI from one "premium" bull, this method creates "premium" cows

I am more concerned about the unlabelled GM crops we consume even when they are labelled Organic....:mad:
 
I can't say that I've kept up with what has been going on over the last couple years. However, I do recall that there were/(are?) issues with some cloned animals being more susceptible to some disease and in certain cases undergoing accelerated aging.

If these are still issues with cloned animals, I would wonder what the impact might be on the quality of the meat?
 
wozzlewoozle said:
However, I do recall that there were/(are?) issues with some cloned animals being more susceptible to some disease and in certain cases undergoing accelerated aging.
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Well, if you make 30 clones of a single cow, all the clones will be susceptible to the same diseases as the original. So if you have an epidemic, the probability of all your herd dying are pretty high. As for the accelerated aging, I recall it had something to do with the telomere caps (basically a single DNA sequence repeated many times, TTAGGG if my memory serves me well) at the end of each chromosome, which are reduced every time the cell duplicated. If the cap is completely reduced, the chromosome is degraded (as it's not protected by the cap). If you clone a cell with the cap already shortened, the life expectancy of the clone is reduced. The enzyme telomerase can regenerate these telomeres, and is being investigated as a possible "cure" for aging (although I don't agree with the term "aging" being used as a disease, thus the quotation marks)

I could be wrong, and would be glad to be corrected if I am. I haven't brushed up on my genetics classes in over a year, so I'm quite rusty
 
Xeem said:
Very true; I don't think we should do anything to intentionally thin the gene pool of any species we rely on.
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Well it's not like they would go extinct...
And It's not like the entire world is changing their cattle genetically. Cows will be around for a very long time, especially if the Hindus have anything to say about it ;-)
 
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