FDA: Cloned animals safe to eat ... and WON'T have to be labelled!

It only makes sense.

In a nation where 89 percent oppose escalation of the Iraq catastrophe, and yet the government bullies its way forward with nary a whimper of dissent from the media or opposition party, there's a perversely symmetrical logic to the FDA's declaration, in the face of overwhelming public wariness, that cloned meat and dairy products are safe.

So safe that there's no need to identify cloned products as such. And here's betting that alternative producers will be forbidden from advertising their products as NOT cloned.

OK. It's almost too obvious to say. Cloned food is "safe" not because all possible ramifications and side effects have been looked into (they have not), but because big money corporate interests stand to make megabucks off the technology.

The best comment to date I've seen was on a grist message board from one SM Lowry (in fact, it was the ONLY message on the message board. Kinda scary that this announcement didn't have a broad ohmyfuckingod impact) :

This is really no surprise, and activists who oppose cloning have no definitive proof that eating cloned meat poses a problem. On the other hand, those who support it have no definitive proof that it doesn't. No one has eaten cloned meat or slurped milk from cloned cows long enough for there to be statistics one way or another. But, in when the agenda is controlled by those who benefit one way or another, precaution is ignored in favor of profit. Ten years down the road we may discover many problems we didn't know existed today. At least cloned animals aren't going to be spreading their genetically engineered sperm all over the place like the GE pollen from plants.

The thing that gets me with all of this (and with GE foods, too) is no labeling will be required. So once this stuff comes on the market the only thing those opposed to it can do is not buy meat or milk except from small-scale, local farmers who promise not to use cloned animals. (Which isn't such a terrible thing, really). Also the industry will probably try to use legal force to forbid farms and markets from labeling as they did with dairy producers that labeled their products BGH free.

Here's the comment from the Consumer Federation of America:

The Food and Drug Administration today announced it intends to allow cloned
milk and meat in the food supply, imposing these products on a public that
opposes cloning technology and does not want to consume cloned foods.

The Gallup Research Organization reports that over 60 percent of Americans
think animal cloning is immoral. Other respected independent polls report
consumers declare they will not knowingly eat the products even after FDA
approves them. Both FDA and the cloning industry are aware that consumers
won’t knowingly buy cloned foods. The FDA therefore has okayed selling the
products without identifying labels, preventing consumers from choosing not to
purchase and use cloned foods.

CFA urges consumers who oppose production and sale of milk and meat from
cloned animals to make their views known. Write to the FDA and tell them to
reverse this anti-consumer action. Write to your members of Congress urging
them to put a stop to FDA’s efforts to sell cloned animals. Tell your supermarket
manager that you don’t want to eat cloned milk and meat and ask them not to sell
these.

And a not insignificant sidebar: Maryland farmer Greg Wiles, the first to have a commercial clone on his dairy farm, is in dire financial straits (because of his clones) and may be forced to sell them for slaughter, from whence they will enter the food supply. Wiles does not want it to come to that. Interestingly, his reservations about his own cows have met with a hands over the ears response on the part of federal officials:

Mr. Wiles, who has experienced a number of health problems with his cloned animals, believes that the animals should not be put into the food supply and instead be evaluated as part of the risk assessment process used to determine whether or not milk and meat from cloned animals is safe. Over the last several years, Mr. Wiles has brought this matter to the attention of the government meeting with FDA and USDA officials but has been rebuffed in his attempts to have his cloned animals fully evaluated and used in research.