FDA: "Send in the Clones"

I'm not sure how comfortable you feel about eating an animal baby Frankenstein. If a man-made bovine doesn't frighten you, you'll likely find this article rather unimpressive. Before I launch into my conservative tirade on the FDA's position on cloned animals, may I say that generally, I am all for progress and forward advances: best to be on the side that's moving ahead than the one that falls behind. But in this case, I am a stark, steadfast holdout. I'm unashamed about it, and I feel that it is the only position to take, lest our entire society slip down a subversive slope of unbeknownst evil and catastrophe. Do I sound like Pat Robertson yet? On this issue, I sure hope to.

I was assigned last week to cover the FDA's January statement that it cannot require food manufacturers or farmers to disclose when they are selling or making food from cloned animals or their progeny since there is nothing--technically--to report. According to the FDA, since the animal is the same, there's nothing to say.

BUT THE ANIMAL IS NOT THE SAME. A cloned animal is not the same as an animal that was born and bred from another, living, organically birthed animal. When I say organic here, I'm not talking about free-range, grass fed, hormone free, happy-go-lucky, sustainable cows. Whether or not an animal grazes outside or gets a marbled body eating cornmeal in a stall suddenly seems trivial.

Anyway, it really doesn't matter now. The government has admitted that clones "may have" entered the U.S. food supply. But there's no way of knowing. (They are all the same.) Therefore, we should just keep buying hot dogs and hamburgers and forget the source.

A quick look at how cloning works: eggs from a mother mammal are scrapped from her skin and planted into the embryo of a surrogate mother of the same species. (Though it does make you wonder: what if the cells were implanted into the very mother herself?! Double doomsday!) Researchers remove the nucleus from the host embryonic cell and the skin cells placed inside form into a little creature--genetically identical to the one who lent its skin. How easy is that? Why the heck didn't that happen as soon as scientists discovered how to use a microscope? Or as soon as in vitro became popular with humans?

It didn't happen right away because the public was squeamish. Scientists were squeamish. But some plowed forward, ignoring the warnings of Mary Shelley, and now man-made pigs and cows are roaming American pastures. That's right: cloned animals are no longer in the confines of white-walled labs and isolated research centers. They have been created and sold and are birthing new babies and providing us with milk and bacon. We are eating clones. And as the FDA has proudly reported, we have no way of knowing.

I don't want to eat cloned bacon. I don't want my children to drink milk from cloned cows in school. It terrifies me to imagine ingesting an animal that came into existence via skin cells instead of sperm--even if the FDA claims that the health risks are non-existent.

If in this case the old parable of playing God where life is concerned is enough to give a reasonably un-secular individual like me the heebie jeebies, why aren't the evangelicals all over it? If stem cell research is such a big deal, doesn't it seem unsettling to actually ingest the meat of an animal so falsely wrought?

But even members of the all-scorning religious right don't know that the milkshake they had after mass came from the udder of Bessie II. I may have eaten the same this weekend, in fact, as the guest of unsuspecting hosts who served Baskin Robins for dessert.

What I find even more distasteful than eating an ice cream clone is the idea that my fellow Americans and I have been duped and played for fools. As a citizen of a country that ardently preaches and spreads Democracy, I think it is my right to choose between a cow au naturele and a cow part deux.

If the FDA were entirely comfortable serving up cloned animals and their bi-products, why have they refused to require labeling? Why have they suggested that the livestock industry continue a voluntary moratorium on such meat and milk? Because, explains Dan Charles, science correspondent for NPR, the FDA worries about market reaction in the U.S. and abroad. People would be sensitive to the issue. So to prevent public discomfort, the FDA keeps cloned food a secret.

Nondisclosure of this issue strikes me as a sneaky and deviant way to get Americans to eat food they might otherwise avoid. And suddenly we discover we've been eating it all along: our freedom of food choice was gone before we even knew the difference.

Comments

[muledeer]

Very good to have an opinion, a few of your facts are way off.Cloning works very differently than your simple explanation.Skin cells are taken from the donor(bovine in this case) these are called somatic cells(any type of cell other than a sperm cell or egg cell) it contains the DNA, the genetic blueprint.They are cultured and grown in a lab and the tips of the DNA ,the telomeres ,return to their original length (no premature aging) This DNA is then inserted into an empty oocyte( one in which the DNA) has been removed) the two are then fused and causes it to divide.It is then put into a suragate animal. As for it happening, frogs were cloned from adult nuclear cells in 1952. Where you been?

[nevermore69]

A cloned animal is an identical copy...a twin separated by time. It shares the same DNA as the donor animal. And Yes, because of enviromental factors, that animal may turn out different...but genetically it still shares the same DNA. Identical twins are the result of a fertilized embryo splitting in-vivo...so I guess you can call them natures clones. And as far as "playing God"...doctors and patients 'play God' every day when they undergo hormone therapy to conceive. The outcome in many cases is multiple births...twins...natures clones. So should these people be labelled..."not a product of natural conception?"

[Schaz]

When you stated "BUT THE ANIMAL IS NOT THE SAME", I was open to hearing how the animal that results from cloning is different from other animals...but you never supported the claim. The methods by which each comes into being differ, but in what respect are the animals, once born, different?

Without that, you merely present an emotional argument based on squeamishness at the idea, which isn't so convincing unless someone else shares that visceral response to the idea. I would have liked to have been able to consider your arguments for why the cloned animal is not the same.