Here is a part of story written by a fellow that went out to a farm that raised cloned animals to find out for himself what is going on. Unfortunately he discovered that cloned animals are already in the grocery store…


"When the meat is done cooking, Coover and I each slide a steak onto our paper plates and head into the office to sample it. My inch-thick slab is an unpalatable cadaver-gray. I have to saw gingerly to avoid snapping my plastic utensils. I make two perpendicular incisions in the meat. When it seems loose enough, I pinch a small chunk between my fingers and start twisting in circles to get it loose. I pop a morsel into my mouth and immediately regret it — it tastes spongy and stale. I try not to gag.

Coover moves his plate from the table to his lap for more torque. "I can't even cut this," he grumbles to himself. Prying loose a wedge, he bites into it and winces.

"This is terrible," he says matter-of-factly. He chuckles. "Now I know why they were still in the freezer."

I ask if the taste and texture are functions of the meat being from a clone. He checks a date on the label: The meat was frozen in early 2006.

"It's probably a function of being in the freezer for about three years," he says, exaggerating.

Our meal comes from an offspring of a Full Flush clone. The cow was lame, so Coover, fearing that it would be trampled at auction, butchered it. He now has just four Dream Team progeny left at his ranch (though he still has Dream Team semen on ice).

COOVER SAYS HE SHIPPED THE REST OF HIS LOT TO MARKET.

"WAIT. YOU MEAN INTO THE FOOD CHAIN?" I ASK.

"I NEVER WORRIED MUCH ABOUT IT," HE SAYS. "UNLESS YOU TELL THEM IT'S A CLONE, NO ONE CAN TELL."
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/15-11/ff_clonedmeat?currentPage=3

Think about this when you are cooking that steak for dinner tonight.

That's not fair, taking a quote out of context. The meat really did have freezer burn. The other meat the author ate was fine or superior. It appears, from the article, that the problems are with the first generation. Once the cattle make it to adulthood, they can reproduce naturally, and their offspring develop the same as any other natural born animals. Click on the link and read for yourself.

I did read the article. All of it, plus many others on the subject. Whether 2nd generation cloned animals can reproduce naturally or not, was not the point. The point was that CLONED animals are already in the stores and are not being identified, even when stores have informed their suppliers that they do not want cloned animals or their progeny because their customers don't want them.

In other words, not even the stores, much less their customers, are being given a choice!

So what if 2nd generation animals can reproduce naturally? We DON'T know what happens to 4th and 5th generation animals, and in particular, the concern of many scientists is that we don't know if these animals will have any resistance to disease. So far, that aspect of it does NOT look good.

Did you note that the animal the man was eating had been butchered because it was crippled?

From the SAME article, page six…

"Problems like sudden death syndrome are why the Humane Society, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Center for Food Safety have asked the FDA to ban cloning or mandate "clone-free" labels at the supermarkets. According the FDA's risk assessment, many animals created with SCNT process have an "increased risk of adverse heath outcomes" over other animals born via assisted reproductive technologies. Clones also suffer from large offspring syndrome, meaning they grow dangerously fast inside their surrogate mothers.

According to Jaydee Hanson, a policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, those mysterious disorders point to the real question holding clones back: What if? What if clones become ubiquitous and then turn out to be preferentially vulnerable to some emerging disease? And what if eating those clones makes people sick, too? "They need to look at multi generational studies of these animals to see what happens as they breed," Hanson says. "
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/15-11/ff_clonedmeat?currentPage=6

One reasonably bright reader of the above article commented...

"Can anyone say genetic diversity? Want to wipe out a species? Here's how. Shrink the gene pool and wait for a disease. Extinction is almost guaranteed. Look at the Cheetah for an example. Food animals already have a dangerously small gene pool...."

My friend Rosemary gave me a copy of this editorial in the New York Times. The author gives an excellent reason to not support cloning farm animals. The reasoning is very common sensical and clear. He is approaching it from the genetic diversity angle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/opinion/23wed4.html

That's an excellent article.