http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=4138886

Gads...This just makes me feel like throwing up.
What are they doing to our food?

From what I learned from the TV.. Nothing. The CLoned animals are too precious to be used as meat products. Now milk.. may be a whole different issue.

Yanno, they may be safe to eat, but I don't want to eat them. All I want is a chance to make a choice. Is that too much to ask. Same way with Milk and Hormones. Put it on the label and If I don't want to consume, it's MY choice.

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Hairy Moose Knuckles

You lost you choice to make that decision long ago. If you don't produce you own animal you have to buy what the market has to sell or find some who follows standards you can deal with. The fact that none of the groups trying to prevent this new technology can not prove that there is any thing harmful about cloned animals and the fact that they keep confusing cloning with GE. Shows they can not back up there objection with any basis in science at all. Those against cloned animal use for food,seem to ignore the fact that humans have been eating cloned plants and animals for many years. I will post several examples later today.

It is true that a cloned animal will be worth its weight in gold and we will not likely be forced to drink the milk or eat the meat of an animal that was actually cloned. However, from the looks of things, the grocery store consumer will be buying the dairy and meat products from that cloned animals' offspring without knowing it as apparently, those products will not be labeled as such.

When the offspring of cloned animals first hits the market for resale to farmers who want those genetics in their herds, certainly those offspring will be identified as such, because the producer of clones from a grand champion dairy animal worth the big bucks is going to want to get top dollar from the calves.

Ultimately however, if this thing takes off, the paper trails of those animals will likely get lost in the shuffle as more and more calves who are the genetic offspring of a cloned animal get sold at the farmers' auctions. Eventually, I think you are going to have the female granddaughter of a cloned animal inadvertently being bred to the male grandson of the same cloned animal because not all farmers pay close attention to good breeding. And if that were the case, genetic diversity in farm stock animals could be rapidly heading for the downhill slide. Or worse yet, the owner of the cloned animal will not sell the offspring at all: he's just going to clone the same cow over and over again and decides to keep them all for himself. Eventually, he might want to milk 400 exact carbon copies of good old Bessie the cow, since each one of her clones will be producing 16 gallons of milk a day, and he will be able to drive the other Dairy farmers right out of the market.

But for me, my true objection to this whole cloning thing is that as the technology to clone becomes more common place, you can bank on the fact that some egomaniacal, filthy rich jerk with the morals and ethics of a common housefly is going to pay a million bucks to somebody under the table to clone him, and then we will have a thousand more egomaniacal, filthy rich jerks just like him running around.

Passing laws against cloning human beings will not stop it from happening, anymore than passing laws against meth and crank have stopped the drug epidemics. But then again, perhaps I am just not ready for the "Brave New World" order…

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Originally posted by thegreatgardener:
Those against cloned animal use for food,seem to ignore the fact that humans have been eating cloned plants and animals for many years. I will post several examples later today.

Since when have we been eating cloned plants and animals for years?

As for cloned animals being identical, people are forgetting what the scientists involved call "Viability Factor". When a living organism is cloned several times (a clone of a clone of a clone as it were) the organism stops being alive. In otherwords, it is no longer a "Viable", alive, organism. While they might look identical, they are not. Until science can get past this "Viability Factor" there is NO way they can convince me that clone products are the exact same as the originals.

wd8izh you have eaten potatoes, strawberries and raspberries. there you go you have eaten cloned plants without even knowing it. Since all these plant reproduce asexually which is the exact same thing as cloning. The only difference between current cloning and previous cloning is where and how it is done.

I like having the choice as well and I hope it will be marked so you know the difference.

Since they are going to have it around, I think I'd wait until the test subjects consume it first.

If, indeed it is totally safe, it would be great so that maybe hunger will disappear in the world.

Theoretically, every time anyone takes a cutting from their favorite houseplant, puts a little root tone on it and sticks it in a rooting medium, we "have taken a clone" of the parent plant. We call it "cuttings" they call in clones. We are dealing with semantics here.If you take a seed potato and cut it into four pieces, each is a clone of the parent potato.

I have no problem with cloned plants. I have a problem with cloned animals and genetically engineered plants and animals.

Perhaps I have grown cynical, but I don't think it a mere coincidence that cloning animals and genetically engineering animals is progressing at about the same pace. What do flies eat? Manure? So, if you genetically engineer a cow so it is crossed with a fly, what do you have? An animal that eats its own manure and gives milk at the same time? They could clone millions of them. Some may call that "solving the world's hunger problem" and others might call that "a crime against God and Mother Nature."

I am actually for the cloning of plants, even if it involves some rather elaborate tissue culture. Two of the top C-4 biomass plants in the world; Miscanthus x Gigantus, and various kinds of temperate bamboos are notoriously difficult to clone asexually. Cloning them by tissue culture may actually be the only way we can produce enough plants to take care of our biomass needs. Right now just one bamboo plant runs you $25 to $100 each; obviously too expensive to plant the acres and acres of them that would be needed to create fast growing CO2 sinks that can create either electricity or fuel.

But cloning a plant and cloning an animal are two very different things in my book. Cows, pigs, sheep and goats have brains. Pigs are actually smarter than dogs are. They think, and we will be giving them no choice. Millions of carbon copies of Bessie the cow will be standing in a crowded feed lot eating their own poop if the CAFOs who are financing this, have their way. After all, they are already feeding feed lot cattle their own "dry solids" from anaerobic digesters, so they've already got the beef we eat eating their own manure. So let's genetically engineer them so they eat more of it and put on even more weight, and then clone them. That’s where this is headed, because it's not about the welfare of the animal, nor is it about feeding the world or saving the environment. It's about a handful of filthy rich fat cats who want to control the world's food. It's about money, power and control.

I vote "NO."

What bothers me most about this story is that, once again, the consumer is deprived of making an educated choice about whether or not he/she wants to buy/consume these products. The same thing has occurred with irradiated food and genetically modified organisms – none are required to be labeled as such. Meat and milk from cloned animals may prove to be perfectly safe to consume, but forgive me if I don't take the FDA's word on it – they have a miserable track record.

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What bothers me most about this story is that, once again, the consumer is deprived of making an educated choice about whether or not he/she wants to buy/consume these products.

Bravo, Matt-choo. You are so right. We are NOT being given a choice about one of our basic needs; our food. Back in the late 70's Henry Kissinger said something I have never forgotten. He said, "Food is power. You can use it to control nations." Unfortunately, the very wealthy apparently listened to him, because if those who own all the land today were not using food as a method by which to gain power and control over the masses, obviously we would be given a choice in what we can buy, and we are not being given that option. Control over our food sources has apparently become the "new control" system of the wealthy; a system that will replace the control oil and gas has had over our nation in the past. And this did not happen overnight, Matt-choo. That group has been driving the family farmer off the land purposefully since at least the 60's. Things like that don't happen accidentally. They happen because somebody had a very well-thought out long term plan for using food as the new control, and those people have been implementing that plan increment by increment for years.

Today in America, only four corporations control 84% of the cereals market, 60% of the pork market, 84% of the cereals market, 52% of the poultry slaughter market, 80% of the beef market and 66% of the rice market. Furthermore, approximately 80% of all farm subsidies go to the nations top 5% largest land owners.

It's about control, plain and simple, and it really ticks me off.

USDA Recommends That Food From Clones Stay Off the Market

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...rss_email/components

Apparently the USDA and the FDA are having an argument about it, and the USDA thinks we have the right to choose.

Also just watched CNN's Lou Dobbs Show which ran a story on the same thing today. Apparently the European Union is also having some serious discussions about cloned animals, and to the European Union's credit, it's already been decided that "if" they allow cloned animal products on the market, they will have to be labeled as such.

Thank goodness I don't eat red meat! Whatever. I think cloned animals should be banned, but Likewise, I have taken cuttings from plants especially tomatoes and made new plants. Was that cloning?

I am interested in which type of clone they are using. We are familiar with Dolly the sheep. Cloning adults is difficult and the animals are prone to problems relating to premature aging. However, another form of cloning is to split an embryo at the eight cell stage to form eight identical "twins". Someone objecting to this might also want to avoid eating any identical twin calves. The DNA is the same in either case.
As far as farmers ignoring breeding and using poor breeding practices, inept farmers can inbreed animals without cloning being involved at all. I think that a farmer who does not pay attention to the quality if their stock would have a hard time competing.