You Could be Consuming Cloned Meat and Milk and Not Know it!

On Jan. 15, 2008, about a year after its initial announcement, the FDA finalized its safety ruling, green-lighting the sale of meat and milk products from the offspring of cloned animals.

Due to the high cost of cloning, cloned animals are primarily used for breeding purposes. For instance, a milk supplier would clone the cow that produces the most milk out of the herd and then use those clones to breed more milk producing cows. The farmer would sell the milk of those offspring, not of the clones themselves, since they would be more valuable as breeders. As of March 2008, the USDA estimated that there were around 600 cloned animals used for breeding in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also requested that manufacturers refrain from selling products from actual cloned animals to allow the market to catch up to the technology. They were "requested" to not sell, but what is stopping them from selling the clones for meat? There's no law that prohibits the selling of cloned meat for human consumption. I can imagine them using the cloned animals for meat after they're done being used as breeders. Why waste good meat?

The FDA doesn't require special cloned meat labeling for food manufacturers that sell meat and milk from cloned offspring. Also, there's no scientific test to determine whether a meat or milk product came from cloned animal lineage.

­The FDA announced in September 2008 that cloned meat and milk may already be in the nation's food supply.

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/cloned-meat.htm

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-15/health/fda.cloning_1_meat-and-milk-clone-free-center-of-food-safety?_s=PM:HEALTH

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-we-eating-cloned-meat

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/09/14/attack_of_the_cloned_4_h_blue_ribbon_winners