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Cloned Meats: Granny Always Said You Are What You Eat

Grandmothers everywhere have been saying it for generations. “Eat up, honey. You are what you eat.”

A January 2008 announcement by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has turned Granny’s meal-time mantra into a pill a little too bitter to swallow for a growing number of Americans. The FDA’s unsavory announcement gives the US the dubious distinction of being the very first country ever to declare the meat from cloned animals as being safe for nutritional consumption.

Following Granny’s lead, this declaration means American consumers will have some truly delicious consequences ahead as a result of the coming food supply. Cloned calves frequently suffer from debilitating and disfiguring birth defects such as squashed faces and enlarged tongues. They suffer intestinal blockages and the effects of immune system deficiencies. And diabetes. Cloned animals die very young and their own offspring isn’t healthy either.

The surrogate mothers of these cloned calves suffer from their own menu of misfortune, too. They must be pumped up with high levels of hormones and antibiotics just to sustain pregnancy, no doubt passing on a large percentage of these drugs to the calves they carry. And when the hormones and antibiotics fail, painful and dangerous late-term spontaneous abortions occur. So do over-sized calves, cesarean deliveries, and early prenatal death.

Even with the extreme measures being taken to give birth to a cloned animal, only about 10% of them survive albeit with a host of debilitating illnesses and early death.

Many Americans find these descriptions highly offensive and others find cruelty to animals. What Americans won’t find, however, is labeling that identifies meat from cloned animals versus meat coming from a more naturally born animal. The FDA has made no provisions whatsoever to label cloned meats so the American consumer will never know what’s really on the dinner table.

Without identification on the labeling, there will also be no way to recall meats deemed dangerous should problems become apparent once the cloned meats have entered the national food supply.

The Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit against the FDA after a petition submitted in 2006 was denied. The petition asked for testing all potential food items coming from cloned animals to pass the same high level of scrutiny as pharmaceutical drugs must. The desired outcome of the lawsuit is to obtain a court order demanding meticulous testing since the FDA refuses to do so voluntarily.

Even so, skeptics are leery of even the most thorough testing measures of the FDA after repeated scares in recent years concerning Vioxx and other recalled drugs, antifreeze in pet foods, bans on vitamins, and a food supply based on an ever-expanding list of chemical additives.

If Granny’s words of wisdom ring true, Americans may be healthier and happier buying as much food as possible from local farms and community-based cooperatives than the products that come from the big, industrial human feeding troughs stocking our supermarkets today.

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