CLONED ANIMALS - Oh, boy! They are already in the American food stream!

[Guest guest]

Yes, it's in the newspaper today. Turns out they are already sneaking it into

our livestock

genetics. Wow! It's a good thing the FDA keeps our food SAFE! OH..... no, it

turns out that

it WAS THE FDA that snuck it in!

Here's the good news, like E. coli, Mad Cow and other issues, this will help

turn more and

more people away from commodity meat and towards sustainable, natural food.

READ THIS GREAT REPORT....

------------------------------------------------------------

Hello all,

It won't be surprising if some of you get local press calls today in

light of today's FDA decision (see article below) related to cloning.

Please feel free to steal any of the quotations below or to call us

for any additional background if we can help support your efforts.

Best regards,

Mark Kastel

The Cornucopia Institute

" The arrogance of some in corporate agribusiness will likely, once

again, drive consumers to purchase organic food, the last bastion of

authenticity in the human food chain. "

" Just as in the dairy industry's adoption of genetically engineered

bovine growth hormone (rBGH/rBST), if the meat industry circles the

wagons they will drive consumers to the natural food cooperatives and

grocers stocking organic meat. "

" The National Organic Program at the USDA, responsible for oversight

of the organic industry, made it very clear that cloned animals, and

their progeny, are strictly banned from organic livestock production. "

" Consumers concerned about experiments with their food supply or

humane treatment of livestock are very uncomfortable with cloning

technology. " A recent opinion poll conducted by the Food Information

Council found that 58 per cent of Americans surveyed would be

unlikely to buy meat or milk from cloned animals, even if supported

by FDA safety endorsements.

The realities of cloning include some disturbing phenomena:

64% of cattle, 40% of sheep, and 93% of cloned mice exhibit some form

of abnormality, with a large percentage of the animals dying during

gestation or shortly after birth

· High rates of late abortion and early prenatal death, with

failure rates of 95% to 97% in most mammal cloning attempts

· Defects such as grossly oversized calves, enlarged tongues,

squashed faces, intestinal blockages, immune deficiencies, and diabetes

· When cloning does not produce a normal animal, many of the

difficult pregnancies cause physical suffering or death to the

surrogate mothers

" Regardless of what the proponents claim this is all about bottom-

line profit and producing more and more of our food from giant

industrial-scale farming operations. We are getting so, so far away

from farmer and the intimate connection between the land,

animals, and the people who care for them in a sustainable and

regenerative system. I wish I could say this was science fiction "

Widespread adoption of cloning could lead to the dramatic loss of

genetic diversity in livestock. " This may leave farmers and our

nation's food supply susceptible to devastating epidemics due to a

monoculture gene pool—think the Irish potato famine. "

All quotations attributable to:

Mark A. Kastel

Senior Farm Policy Analyst

The Cornucopia Institute

Cornucopia, Wisconsin

www.cornucopia.org

Interviews available upon request via e-mail or at the phone number

listed below.

FDA Says Cloned Animals Are Safe

For Food, but Sales Won't Begin Yet

Associated Press

January 15, 2008 3:05 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- Meat and milk from cloned animals are as safe as that

from their counterparts bred the old-fashioned way, the Food and Drug

Administration said Tuesday -- but sales still won't begin right away.

The decision removes the last big U.S. regulatory hurdle to marketing

products from cloned livestock, and puts the FDA in concert with

recent safety assessments from European food regulators and several

other nations.

" Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food

we eat every day, " said Sundloff, FDA's food safety chief.

But the government has asked animal cloning companies to continue a

voluntary moratorium on sales for a little longer -- not for safety

reasons, but marketing ones.

USDA Undersecretary Bruce Knight called it a transition period for

" allowing the marketplace to adjust. " He wouldn't say how long the

moratorium should continue.

" This is about market acceptance, " Mr. Knight added, who said he

would be calling a meeting of industry leaders to determine next steps.

Regardless, it still will be years before many foods from cloned

animals reach store shelves, for economic reasons: At $10,000 to

$20,000 per animal, they're a lot more expensive than ordinary cows,

meaning producers likely will use clones' offspring for meat, not the

clone itself.

And several large companies -- including dairy giant Dean Foods Co.

and Hormel Foods Corp. -- have said they have no plans to sell milk

or meat from cloned animals because of consumer anxiety about the

technology.

But FDA won't require food makers to label if their products came

from cloned animals, although companies could do so voluntarily if

they knew the source. Last month, meat and dairy producers announced

an industry system to track cloned livestock, with an electronic

identification tag on each animal sold. Customers would sign a pledge

to market the animal as a clone.

But that system is voluntary, and there is no way to tell if milk,

for example, came from the daughter of a cloned cow.

" Both the animals and any food produced from those animals is

indistinguishable from any other food source, " Dr. Sundloff said.

" There's no technological way of distinguishing a food that's come

from an animal that had a clone in its ancestry. It's not possible. "

The decision was long-expected, but controversial. Debate has been

fierce within the Bush administration as to whether the FDA should

move forward, largely because of trade concerns. Consumer advocates

petitioned against the move, and Congress had passed legislation

urging the FDA to study the issue more before moving ahead.

" The FDA has acted recklessly, " said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who

sponsored that legislation. " Just because something was created in a

lab, doesn't mean we should have to eat it. If we discover a problem

with cloned food after it is in our food supply and it's not labeled,

the FDA won't be able to recall it like they did Vioxx -- the food

will already be tainted.

" If you ask what's for dinner, it means just about anything you can

cook up in a laboratory, " said Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer

Federation of America, who pledged to push for more food producers to

shun clones.

The two main U.S. cloning companies, Viagen Inc. and Trans Ova

Genetics, already have produced more than 600 cloned animals for U.S.

breeders, the vast majority cattle, including copies of prize-winning

cows and rodeo bulls.

" We certainly are pleased, " said Trans Ova President Faber, who

noted that previous reports by the National Academy of Sciences and

others have reached the same conclusion.

" Our farmer and rancher clients are pleased because it provided them

with another reproductive tool, " he added.

It was a day forecast since ish scientists announced in 1997

that they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep. Ironically, sheep

aren't on the list of FDA's approved cloned animals; the agency said

there wasn't as much data about their safety as about cows, pigs and

goats.

By its very definition, a successfully cloned animal should be no

different from the original animal whose DNA was used to create it.

But the technology hasn't been perfected -- and many attempts at

livestock cloning still end in fatal birth defects or with deformed

fetuses dying in the womb. Moreover, Dolly was euthanized in 2003,

well short of her normal lifespan, because of a lung disease that

raised questions about how cloned animals will age.

The FDA's report acknowledges that, " Currently, it is not possible to

draw any conclusions regarding the longevity of livestock clones or

possible long-term health consequences' for the animal.

But the agency concluded that cloned animals that are born healthy

are no different than their non-cloned counterparts, and go on to

reproduce normally as well.

" The FDA says, " We assume all the unhealthy animals will be taken out

of the food supply,' " said ph Mendelson of the Center for Food

Safety, a consumer advocacy group that opposes FDA's ruling. " They're

only looking at the small slice of cloned animals that appear to be

healthy… It needs a lot further study. "

Associated Press

Mark A. Kastel

The Cornucopia Institute

kastel@...

608-625-2042 Voice

866-861-2214 Fax

[Guest guest]

The whole idea of people eating cloned animals makes me sick!

Does anyone else think it's a weird coincidence how the beginning of

mandatory monitoring of livestock is starting at about the same time as

the introduction of cloned animals to the industry? Yuck Yuck Yuck!

I feel for my children and pray the they will have some kind of choice

in what they get to eat when they are raising their families!