FDA Says Cloned Animals for Food Are Safe : Health, Ethical and Moral Dilemmas

Science fiction is now reality as the FDA has released a formal recommendation that milk and meat from cloned animals should be allowed on grocery store shelves.

According to USA Today, the FDA decision is based on numerous, "rigorous studies, all of which have concluded that milk and meat from cloned animals is virtually identical to such products from conventional animals. Scientists have also been unable to detect health problems in laboratory animals raised on clonal food."

Americans do not want food from cloned animals, polling shows at least 60% of them are opposed to it. I ask, "Why do we want to clone animals for food in the first place?" Will cloning livestock lower food prices? No, cloned animals will cost as much to raise and distribute. Do we have a food shortage? Far from it, we waste more than we consume. Will cloning animals for food help world hunger? That is not a goal. Will cloning livestock provide more of the best cuts of meat? Yes. This is largely what cloning animals for food is about; we want more of the best. And what will we pay for this luxury?

This is what cloning animals for food will accomplish: Unknown consequences. In them lies potential dangers we may only have begun to assess.

First, we will be messing with Mother Nature, some will say God, but that is yet a separate, albeit important, issue. Nature has a way of weeding out the ill and unfit animals, including us, on the planet. Say we were to genetically replicate one or several animals through cloning that are thought to be healthy. Then we find we have just bred an undiscovered genetic defect en masse.

Taking this further, this cloned animal defect predisposes the cloned animals involved to a zoonosis, disease that is spread to humans. This defect, in the cloned animals and their offspring, subjected to different environments, could mutate or spread quite rapidly. Then what? We have less food supply available, not more, and perhaps more food-borne illness. Far-fetched? I think not.

Second, in cloning animals for food we will be limiting genetic diversity. In nature, the same defect would be isolated to the original animal's genes and may weed itself out naturally. Genetically diverse animals are healthier and can better ward off illness. Ask any professional breeder how many losses they have in their highly pedigreed animals, ones that are inbred. Not to mention, "The FDA acknowledges that clone pregnancies result in more miscarriages, deformities and premature deaths than do other technologies. But the agency dismisses this fact, saying the problems aren't unique." (USA Today)

Third, the FDA would approve that food from cloned animals does not need to be identified. With the labeling overhaul in recent years, this means we will know more about the oil content of a potato chip then the meat we eat and the milk we drink. Many people do not trust the FDA for its many failures. Why should Americans be required to be guinea pigs and rely on the FDA's limited science to approve such a drastic measure as cloning animals for food? Especially when considering the ethical, moral and likely health-related consequences.

Aside from scientific concerns, which this article barely surfaces, pages upon pages could be filled with the moral and ethical issues, cloning animals for food concerns. These may be as important, if not more, than the potential health issues this technological experiment will propogate.

Barring unforeseen events, the only way cloning animals for food will not move forward prematurely is if President Bush puts a halt to the developments and encourages consultation and discussion from many venues, both scientific and otherwise, including ethicists, historians, religious leaders, and public representatives.

Proponents of cloning animals for food claim that those against it are in the dark, that cloning is scientific. Science also proclaimed that the world was flat, that antiseptics in surgery were unneccessary, and that the mental ill were demon-possessed. Science has been wrong many times since. Cloning is too serious a matter to rush, cloned food is not needed and the consequences could be unfavorable and irreversible. Are the risks worth it?

I think President Bush said it best in a statement on human cloning, made in April 2002, "Life is a creation, not a commodity."

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