cloned meat

If the biotech industry has its way, ordering a hamburger might soon sound something like this: “one charbroiled cloned-beef patty, with genetically modified cheese, lab-grown bacon and vitamin-C-fortified lettuce, on a protein-spiked bun.” The burger of the future is delicious, nutritious and contains more engineering than a stealth bomber.

If you were eating the spawn of a clone, would you want to know? Actually, you probably have already. As Ben Paynter pointed out in his lovely story for Wired last year, ranchers have been asked by the FDA to voluntarily keep clones and their offspring out of the food supply, but there’s no enforcement. And it’s not like they taste any different.

In late December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the meat and milk from cloned cattle, goats and pigs are safe and do not require any special labeling. The announcement drew immediate protest from consumer groups, which criticized the agency for reaching a sweeping safety conclusion based on data from relatively short- term studies on fewer than 100 cloned food animals. They also cited the high incidence of birth defects among cloned animals.

The meat and milk from cloned animals are safe to eat and should be allowed for sale, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And you'll never know, anyway, because the labeling will be a clone of the labeling used for non-cloned beef. No special labeling is needed, the FDA says in an article published in the Jan. 1 issue of Theriogenology and in the full 678-page study posted on the FDA web site last week. The less we know the better, apparently. Why else would the results of a four-year investigation in cloning safety be announced quietly between Christmas and New Year's?