Monday, February 18, 2008

Tracking Cloned Meat – Are Consumers Afraid of the Unknown?


The FDA persists in their refusal to label cloned meat. Speculation exists that consumers are wary due to “fear of the unknown”, despite repeated reassurance that cloned meat is safe. Is it really just the unknown factor? Given the FDA’s record of mishaps and recalls, don’t we have a right to fear something that speaks to us as so unnatural?

Patrick Cunningham, PhD, chief science adviser to the Irish government and a founding executive of the company IdentiGEN is supporting public wariness by proposing a DNA tracking system for cloned meat. The meat tracking system would require that companies who clone animals keep records of the animal’s DNA. This would allow consumers to submit meat for testing. It’s possible that even traces of cloned meat can show up in anything from soups to various cuts of beef, making labeling somewhat encompassing. In the UK and Ireland, several large retailers and food producers offer IdentiGEN to consumers for certification and to aid in safety recalls, another consideration of value.

Mark Walton, PhD, president of ViaGen, a company that clones animals for use in agriculture, says: "It's hard to imagine a scientific reason or a health reason that you would need to follow animals at all. Dr. Walton says consumers possess “fear of the unknown” when it comes to consuming cloned meat. He calls it nothing more than a “breeding technology”. He points out that a prize stud can only produce so much semen. The "prize" would be cloned for his semen, and we would eat his superior children.

This is entirely believable because a cloned steer costs $13,500 versus $1,000 for a normal steer. (Should that read an “abnormal steer” costs $13,500?) Walton says his company has cloned “about 400-500” animals in the past four years. What’s 100 clones, give or take? $1,350,000, to be exact.

Of interest, the United States has no method in place to trace processed foods back to specific animals, a system that both Europe and Canada have in place.

Is the urge to consume huge quantities of beef so strong that this could become a conventional breeding method? I think any sane person would agree there are friendlier options for the economy, the environment and as a solution for our starving world populations, not to mention our natural systems. Where are we going, or rather, how did we get here?

We know we are losing our connection with nature, but we’ve let ourselves believe otherwise by listening rather than sensing. We are no longer a co-evolved food chain, and in spite of what I’ve been told, I “feel” the difference and I see it reflected in emerging health issues.

Ref:http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/570297?sssdmh=dm1.336919&src=nldne ◦
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2 comments:

  1. I don't see anything wrong or distastful from eating a cloned creature.
    Basicly isn't this what man has been doing for yearons ? Breeding and cross breeding to get the right product ?
    If you have the perfect animal with the highest possible product. Wouldn't you want it cloned to insure that future product is at the highest possible standards ?
    True, the first clone is expensive, but the cost will drasticly afterwards .

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  2. Anonymous,
    Thanks for your comment.

    No, I wouldn't want it cloned to ensure high standards. I am very supportive of natural systems, something I've been studying in hopes of using it to help my patients.

    This is from Dr. Michael J. Cohen, whose opinion I value, and whose advice I solicited regarding cloned meats. I couldn't rephrase it or put it any better:

    "Nature promotes diversity because diversity gives life greater strength and resilience. Our unrecognized prejudice against nature's ways deteriorates the web of life and we suffer many disorders for this reason. The problem we must address is our prejudice against nature for it financially rewards us to trespass nature's perfection, including its diversity. In industrial society, to reject cloned products would be similar to the KKK inviting a person of color into its ranks. What our prejudice fails to take into account is that nature bats last. Until the injurious effects of cloned products are recognized by our jaundiced thinking, our warped sense of reason can't reject these products and our troubles continue.

    To those who recognize this problem, the Webstring Natural Attraction Model offers a tool that, to our benefit, helps us transform our prejudice against nature into co-creative relationships with the web of life.
    See http://www.ecopsych.com/ksanity.html for details of the prejudice problem and its solution."

    I see the problem, and I have enjoyed learning how to rethink.

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