According to the news, meat from cloned cows and pigs will be on our grocery shelves within months and not labelled as genetically engineered or cloned.

Anybody given this any thought?

Ronnoco

I haven't heard this one yet. I think I would like to know if it has or hasn't been genetically engineered. I am fairly paticular about the meat that I consume. I usally get the meat from stock that has been organically feed, that meat is clearly marked. But not by government regulation I am sure. Thanks for sharing that Ron
Greg

I've heard that it was possible, but given the current restrictions and ineffectiveness of cloning technologies, I doubt it will be available within a month. Got a source for that?

Yeah I've been watching it on the news all day. The government says that because it is technically not any different from other meat, it does not need to be labeled. I did get the impression from the news channel though that it would not be on shelves for a while...

I've heard that it was possible, but given the current restrictions and ineffectiveness of cloning technologies, I doubt it will be available within a month. Got a source for that?

Well, a Canadian television station on the 6 oclock news. They also by the way showed video of cloned pigs etc. so obviously there are few restrictions and the technology must be pretty effective.

Ronnoco

Ron,

In the US and most nations, cloning is still in the research phase and a very expensive process. The techniques haven't been developed to the point yet of allowing cheap, mass produced "factory animals" to be birthed, raised, and ground up for hamburger or pork chops.

In the wikipedia article on reproductive cloning, it notes that it is very hard to achieve success. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloning#Health_aspects


The success rate of cloning has been low: Dolly the sheep was born after 277 eggs were used to create 29 embryos, which only produced three lambs at birth, only one of which lived, Dolly. Seventy calves have been created from 9,000 attempts and one third of them died young; Prometea took 328 attempts, and, more recently, Paris Texas was created after 400 attempts. Notably, although the first clones were frogs, no adult cloned frog has yet been produced from a somatic adult nucleus donor cell.

Further, a list of all the animals (not comprehensive) that have been cloned is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_have_been_cloned.

The Chicago Tribune yesterday noted that "Cloned animals are expensive to produce, and it's unlikely that significant amounts of meat or milk from such livestock would go directly into the food supply." http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi-0612290108dec29,1,5287597.story

It does note one company that does agricultural cloning (Cyagra Inc, http://www.cyagra.com/), but a quick view of their website shows that they are more interested in preserving genetic legacies of prized cattle, not cloning for purposes of food.

How do you know that the footage was of cloned pigs and not just some stock footage of pigs from a farm?

And finally...most of the hubbub is about an FDA report that states cloned food products are safe. Final approval hasn't been granted yet.

The big step will be to move to test tube meat
OK maybe a very big test tube
But to do away with farming, and indeed animals altogether
Instead to be able to continuously grow the required muscle tissue cloned from a sample
It needs a large amount of backup technology to simulate the rest of the animal so it's not going to be economical, unless something stops us raising meat animals.

I read about this in the Asheville newspaper this weekend. I get the impression that those companies that DO NOT use cloned meat will be the ones with the labels. They refered to Ben and Jerry's specifically, that they want the public to know that that are not using products from cloned animals, or animals with growth hormones.