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USDA unsure if cloned meat has been sold in U.S.
US Unsure if Cloned Meat has been Sold in North America www.calgaryherald.com work work August 16, 2010
OTTAWA ? The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture on Tuesday said he doesn't know whether cloned cows or their offspring have made it into the North American food supply.
But Tom Vilsack, in Ottawa to talk trade with food exporters and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, emphasized that if they have, the animals are safe to eat.
"I can't say today that I can answer your question in an affirmative or negative way. I don't know. What I do know is that we know all the research, all of the review of this is suggested that this is safe," Vilsack told reporters, pointing to an assessment of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Vislack said that because science is often "ahead of the regulatory process and ahead of the ethics discussion," the U.S. will continue their "moratorium" on not allowing the sale of meat from cloned animals until the products are widely accepted as safe.
Vilsack's comments come a week after the U.K. Food Standards Agency told consumers in that country that descendants of a clone made their way into the local food supply. The cattle were the offspring of a cloned cow in the U.S. and were shipped to the U.K. as embryos.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating a claim that embryos from a cow bred from a cloned parent animal in Britain have been sold to breeders in Canada.
A spokesman for Ritz said there are no products derived from cloned animals approved for sale in Canada, and CFIA would inform the minister if the agency found evidence that food regulations had been violated.
"To date, this has not happened," said Matthew Wolf.
Two years ago, the U.S. FDA concluded that cloned pigs, goats and cattle were safe to eat, as were their progeny. However, the European Parliament recently moved to ban the sale of meat or dairy from cloned animals and their offspring.
In Canada, the departments of agriculture, health and environment, along with CFIA, produced a draft assessment of the safety of cloned animals in August 2008, but it is still in the review stage.
Lucy Sharratt, co-ordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, says "this whole issue of genetically-engineered animals is huge," but the government appears unperturbed by the sector's growth and the potential for entering the food chain.
"If experimental, non-regulated, genetically-engineered animals or crops get into the food system, they don't necessarily care unless the public makes it an issue. That's our experience," said Sharratt.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/unsure+cloned+meat+been+sold+
North+America/3382347/story.html#ixzz0wyFrk1bf
Re: USDA unsure if cloned meat has been sold in U.S.
Stuff like this is why I exclusively eat meat from the Farmer's Market. I know who raised it, and he knows where his calves came from: his cows and his pigs, who are not clones.
I just love the USDA don't you? The answer of "I don't know" instills so much confidence in their regulatory oversight
Disturbing. A word I've been using a lot lately when I read about the USDA.
Add this to my list of reasons for only eating local, pastured meat.
every time i consider eating meat again something like this happens.
question (and this is truly not to be snarky) but how do you know that the farmer's markets do not have cloned meat? at some point they have to get new animals from somewhere, right? i really do not know about the process because i have not eaten meat in so long and never paid attention.
My understanding is that the two types of cloned meat to be concerned about are beef and pork. I don't believe anyone is going through the trouble of cloning chickens. Cloning is (at the moment) an expensive process, so my understanding is that they're currently cloning cows that have perfectly marbled meat, or some other desirable attribute.
The pasture-raised beef farmer at my Farmer's Market births and raises his own calves, so the beef he's selling is from cows he raised from birth. His family has been doing beef for 50 years, and since cloning is a new technology and he's been raising the same type of cow all this time, they can't be cloned. The farmer I get pork from raises them the same way. She's often out of pork because she only raises a few hogs at a time, and has to wait for her sows to have babies, and the 2-3 years for those babies to come to harvest weight.