The U.S. government has approved the sale of food from cloned animals and the EU seems to be headed that way - what will you do?

So, back in the 1940s-60s, various scientists and American govt. agencies told people that eating margarine was not only safe, but better for you and that it would cut down on the rates of heart disease in America. Now we know that there is no evidence for that, and that there is evidence that trans fats-an invented fat found in margarine-actually do increase one's risk of heart attack by a lot. So, I think I'll wait at least 50 years before I go eating cloned meat.

By the way, I got that information from "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. It's fantastic. :-)

I'll wait until I see more long-range testing from eating cloned meat. Also, there is a strong possibility that such meat won't be labeled as cloned in the US, so we may not have a choice in the matter.

I don't think I'd have a problem with it, as long as the cloned animals are happy and well cared for.

If you look closely at common propagation methods, you could say we've been eating cloned fruits and vegetables for generations. If cloning can help bring high-quality protein to places where people don't get enough of it, I'm all for it.

Yeah, right, NOTHING could possibly go WRONG with this idea!
And where is the concern about genetic diversity in the food supply?

Just keep cutting corners...keep cutting corners...
Make everything grow faster, cheaper, etc.
Quality just goes down the toilet.
People will just get sicker and sicker...

We already see that medical studies about how our bodies are effected by nutrition are bogged down in politics and are not up to date. Matter of fact, I feel they are WAY BEHIND, as it is. How are they going to keep up with the food technology changes?

1. Make sure the original is organic: free from pesticides, including in their food, free from antibiotics, and fed what they're supposed to be eating, not fed something convenient and cheap to the manufacturer.

2. Keep the clonees separate from the outside animals in the hopes of preventing disease.

3. Don't let the clonees breed amongst themselves (eww).

4. Feed them what they're supposed to be fed, and don't over medicate them.

If they could manage to get a good original, and keep the descending lines pure, without disease and chemicals, I wouldn't mind cloned protein at all. But not only are most manufacturers cheap, they're also incapable many times, so we'll probably see some freaky headlines in a few years about the clonees.

I'm one of the naysayers who thinks that our technological advances usually get put into practice well before the implications (negative and positive) are fully understood. It's not until generations down the line that the negative impact of our choices starts to be realized. Generally speaking, I choose to avoid unnaturally-derived conveniences.

I'll go with the camp that will be avoiding all of these things if possible. That said, if there are people who would not be bothered with such a thing, then fine. But let the consumer know if the milk, meat, or eggs they are purchasing are in fact cloned! And if the industries want to complain, then maybe the USDA and the European equivalent need to finally tell them to stuff it.

What i don't get is... cloning an animal costs so much money, work and skills.
So the only reason I could come up with something like.. "we need to clone this particular animal X, because nothing ever tasted as good as X". Would that be worth it? I don't know.

A while ago, there was a debate about a pig that makes omega 3 fatty acid (it's published, seriously) among scientists. I mean, that's retarded. Why not eat naturally omega-3 rich foods like flaxseed?

Well, I know this poll is over with, but I wanted to comment and say that I'm especially horrified by this. The companies that manufacture the GMO foods that are in EVERYTHING we eat in the US—unlabled here, because they're not required to be—have been created using "Frankenstein science" (and the old and false belief that one gene controls one thing in an organism).

The companies that make these foods (mostly Syngenta and Monsanto) and the scientists they hire tell us that the foods are safe and no different from non-GMO foods, but in reality there have been NO adequate tests to prove whether this is in fact the case. Not only that, things like the creation of new allergens are nearly impossible to test for because not only do allergies develop over time, but they cannot be tested for with animals. has anyone noticed how, in the past 20 years or so, the number of people (and especially children) in the US who are developing food allergies—sometimes deadly ones—has been increasing rapidly?

I did a lot of research on GMO foods because I have allergies to both wheat and corn, and everything I found out was terrifying, especially the things I learned about Bt corn (the GMO corn that produces its own pesticide, which according to the USDA website now accounts for 49% of the corn grown in the US). Anyway, here are some good links if you're interested. I think this is a very important issue for everyone to be aware of, especially since none of this stuff is labeled in the US anyway, so you might be eating it (well, not you, Maki, but many of your readers) whether you know it or not.

A good place to start is this site for the <a href="http://www.psrast.org/>Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology. I was really confused by a lot of the terms when I first began my research, and this site helped a lot.

This is an article by Jeffrey M. Smith, who wrote "Seeds of Deception" (haven't read it yet), specifically about Bt corn: Part 2: Genetically Engineered Corn.

And this is another good article, though much more scientific, written by Arpad Pusztai (the scientist who was sacked by the Rowett Research Institute for speaking out about his concerns regarding the toxicity of some GMO potatoes that his group was researching): Genetically Modified Foods: Are They a Risk to Human/Animal Health?