Send In The Clones
January 17th, 2008 by Scott
It’s official, carnivores: After years of courting controversy and talk of Frankenfood, the FDA has officially declared milk and meat from cloned animals to be safe for human consumption. Now, I covered this subject in depth in the book (as well as genetically modified Omega3 pork and in vitro meat), so I’m not going to write at length here. You’ll have to read the book yourself, and I very much hope you will. For now, though, I’ll say that the one truly surprising aspect of the FDA’s ruling is that products originating from cloned animals or the offspring of cloned animals won’t have to be labeled as such, since, for all intents and purposes, it’s biologically indistinguishable from it’s au natural counterparts. Hence: when you pick up your roast at the grocery store, there’s no knowing whether or not it’s clone-free. I have a feeling that the market will speak up for this — there are certain to be scores of carnivorous consumers eager for assurance — for whatever reason, be it ethical or religious, or just plain squeamishness — that their lamb chops didn’t come from Dolly. So I imagine that certain producers will be quick to tout their meat as the good old-fashioned kind. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.
But man: what weird times we’ll be living in when we see “Clone Free!” labels on our meat packaging. Brave new world, indeed.
