Although the government has approved meat and milk from cloned animals while it conducts further studies, the nation's largest milk company, Dean Foods Co. of Dallas, said recently that its customers and consumers won't purchase milk from cloned animals. The $10 billion company owns Land O'Lakes and Horizon Organic, among dozens of other brands.
"Numerous surveys have shown that Americans are not interested in buying dairy products that contain milk from cloned cows and Dean Foods is responding to the needs of our consumers," the company said in a statement.
Well, what about milk and other foods that are filled with antibiotics and hormones, which are shown to have detrimental effects in consumers? Most people want to avoid those, too, but they can't. The meat and dairy industries must use them in order to factory farm those animals, so the consumer is stuck with those products, irrespective of their wishes. Oh, but wait, those aren't clones that resulted from evil scientists with wind-blown hair working in a back-room laboratory, is it?
Federal scientists say there is virtually no difference between clones and conventional cows, pigs or goats. The Food and Drug Administration in December gave preliminary approval to meat and milk from cloned animals and could grant final approval by year's end.
Cited story.
"Federal scientists say there is virtually no difference between clones and conventional cows, pigs or goats."
The only part of that that I don't understand is the word "virtually". That implies that there is SOME difference. Is there a difference? Do you know what it is?
Is that the same as the sports announcer who, when the crowd burst into loud applause, said they "literally" exploded?
Seems a lot like lobbying to me. The pharma companies see a potential market, lobby for it to be made available, and just like magic, data appears.
And for this same reason, the big dairy companies that load milk with hormones and antibiotics are able to sell more milk than smaller organic outfits. After all, their subsidies allow them to sell their milk for cheaper.
Wouldn't it benefit the dairy industry to maintain as much genetic diversity as possible? I mean, one nasty disease and the cow clone army could suffer huge losses.
Yes, sciencesque. Hence all the antibiotics.
Bob
it is true that there are good reasons to avoid cloned animals, with easy disease transmission between the animals and between the animals and humans being primary among them (for example, inbreeding combined with factory farming is the reason we have avian influenza getting ready to launch itself onto the world's populations). but i am unconvinced that products from cloned animals are causing humans genetic damage.
Nearly all storebought bananas in the US are clones.