Cloned Animals Will Be Slipped into U.S. Food Chain Within 6-8 Months

[Guest guest]

I had a feeling this was going to happen one day.......Joyce M

 

 

 

-

DitziSis

1DISGUSTED

Friday, February 25, 2005 8:28 PM

Cloned Animals Will Be Slipped into U.S.

Food Chain Within 6-8 Months

 

 

 

Cloned Animals Will Be Slipped into U.S. Food Chain Within 6-8 Months

 

http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/beef021605.cfm

 

GM WATCH daily http://www.gmwatch.org

------

From drugs in your corn flakes to cloned beef in your burger, America's food

chain is shaping up fast as the world's most exotic.

 

CLONED BEEF: " They will go into the food chain, no question, in six or eight

months " - Don Coover, a vet and semen broker, quoted in the Los Angeles Times,

Feb 10, 2005

 

A longish article on cattle ranchers getting impatient with delays in

approving the sale of cloned cattle for food consumption includes, late in the

piece, this startling section:

[Guest guest]

The really bad thing is it won't be marked as such. There will be no way to

determine cloned from real.

There goes the beef!

 

Joyce McCrary <j.mccrary wrote:

 

I had a feeling this was going to happen one day.......Joyce M

 

 

 

-

DitziSis

1DISGUSTED

Friday, February 25, 2005 8:28 PM

Cloned Animals Will Be Slipped into U.S.

Food Chain Within 6-8 Months

 

 

 

Cloned Animals Will Be Slipped into U.S. Food Chain Within 6-8 Months

 

http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/beef021605.cfm

 

GM WATCH daily http://www.gmwatch.org

------

From drugs in your corn flakes to cloned beef in your burger, America's food

chain is shaping up fast as the world's most exotic.

 

CLONED BEEF: " They will go into the food chain, no question, in six or eight

months " - Don Coover, a vet and semen broker, quoted in the Los Angeles Times,

Feb 10, 2005

 

A longish article on cattle ranchers getting impatient with delays in

approving the sale of cloned cattle for food consumption includes, late in the

piece, this startling section:

 

 

http://www.blueaction.org

" Better to have one freedom too many than to have one freedom too few. "

http://www.sharedvoice.org/unamerican/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Origin al sender's name: madcowcoverup

Original sender's address: k_t723

In my opinion certain corporations and their employees need to be eliminated(as

in terminated) as soon as possible or we will all be paying the price , but I

guess the sheople will figure that out too late.

karl theis rebel and heretic til the end

 

Cloned Animals Will Be Slipped into U.S. Food Chain Within 6-8 Months

GM WATCH daily http://www.gmwatch.org

 

------ From drugs in your corn flakes to cloned beef in your burger, America's

food chain is shaping up fast as the world's most exotic. CLONED BEEF: " They

will go into the food chain, no question, in six or eight months " - Don Coover,

a vet and semen broker, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Feb 10, 2005 A longish

article on cattle ranchers getting impatient with delays in approving the sale

of cloned cattle for food consumption includes, late in the piece, this

startling section: 'The calves will be sold to youngsters, who will raise them

for a year and enter them in county fairs and farm competitions, collectively

known as the club calf circuit. The circuit has come to occupy an odd spot in

the clone conflict.

 

Everyone knows the club calves will be sold for slaughter after their last turn

in the show ring. But no one likes to dwell on it. Don Coover, a vet and semen

broker in Galesburg, Kan., has promised two clone offspring to kids to raise

for the circuit. The FDA has no way to track them. " They will go into the food

chain, no question, in six or eight months, " he said. And that's just the

beginning. " I'm selling hundreds - maybe thousands - of units of semen from

bulls that were cloned, " he said. " They're going to be slaughtered, and the FDA

can't do anything about it. " ' Thanks to Pete Shanks, author of 'Human Genetic

Engineering: A Guide for Activists, Skeptics and the Very Perplexed', to be

published in June 2005 by Nation Books, for drawing our attention to this.

------

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci- cattle10feb10,0,622159 9

..story?coll=la-home-headlines The Beef About Clones Los Angeles Times, Feb 10

2005 Ranchers with carbon-copy bulls are fenced in by the public's distaste for

food derived from such animals and delays in FDA approval. By Karen Kaplan,

Times Staff Writer CHARLO, Mont. ? After 30 years of raising cattle the

old-fashioned way, Larry Coleman decided six years ago to plunk down $60,000 to

clone the best Limousin breeding bull these parts had ever seen.

 

First Down, a hulking black creature that died in 1999, produced semen that

sold for as much as $700 a vial ? and he filled thousands of them. Now a new

First Down, along with fellow clones Second Down and Third Down, are ready to

kick off their careers as professional sires. Second Down has already been

relocated to a semen collection facility in Billings. Fliers have been printed.

A three-ring binder contains orders from eager customers. Thousands of semen

straws are waiting in a freezer. And waiting - and waiting - and waiting. " I

thought for sure we'd have our investment back by now, " Coleman said. Blocking

Coleman's leap into the cloning revolution is the Food and Drug Administration,

which despite four years of study has yet to rule that products from cloned

animals are safe to eat.

 

Thousands of other ranchers are in similar straits, holding back prospective

steaks and milk as the FDA studies the issue, although some meat is quietly

making its way to the dinner table. The main concern is not the clones

themselves, which are too precious to butcher for burgers. Rather, the

government is worried that milk from clones or meat from their offspring might

pose some unknown health risk.

 

The FDA did its own study in 2003 and found that " food products derived from

animal clones and their offspring are probably as safe to eat as food from

their non-clone counterparts. " But the ranchers acknowledge there is an

inescapable queasiness about cloning that complicates the government's decision.

Even though the first animal clone - Dolly the sheep - was born nearly a decade

ago, the public still has a hard time grappling with the new science. It's even

harder to think about eating it. According to a survey last year by the

International Food Information Council, a trade group, 62% of consumers said

they would be " very unlikely " or " somewhat unlikely " to buy meat, milk and eggs

from cloned animals.

 

A separate poll conducted by Gallup found that 64% of American consumers

believed cloning animals was " morally wrong. " As Carol Tucker Foreman, director

of the Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute, explained: " The

yuck factor is very large. " Lounging in a slushy pen with a few dozen other

cattle, First Down and Third Down don't seem like much of a threat to the

nation's food supply. Their faces and hindquarters caked in mud, they look

pretty much like all the other bulls & #8212; except bigger. Coleman can't help

but think of the original when he looks at the two clones. " Every wrinkle -

everything about them, even the disposition and character - are the same, " he

said nostalgically. The spirit of the first First Down looms large on the

Coleman ranch.

 

A metal cutout of his blocky silhouette is soldered to the family's mailbox.

His jet-black likeness adorns the tan baseball caps worn by the Coleman clan.

More than 5,500 calves are registered as his offspring. When he was born on the

ranch in 1994, First Down was small like a puppy dog, hardly remarkable. But he

soon outgrew his fellow calves. His yearling weight of 1,580 pounds made him

several hundred pounds heavier than many adult Limousin bulls. In the rating

system for breeding bulls, First Down had phenomenal stats. He ranked in the

top 1% of his breed in terms of growth, docility, muscle marbling and scrotum

size, a measurement used to predict the fertility of his daughters.

 

" The genetics of a bull like that are of extreme value to our population, " said

Kent Andersen, executive vice president of the North American Limousin

Foundation in Englewood, Colo. He declared First Down the " most influential "

Limousin in the country since the first bulls arrived from France in 1971. He

couldn't have been born at a better time. Coleman and his wife of 35 years,

Anita, live a modest life in a town of 439 where the lone grocery store sells

farming magazines at the checkout stand. He manages about 800 head of cattle on

land homesteaded by his grandfather in 1908. Larry's father, brother, nephew

and one son all live within a few miles. In the mid-1980s, a depressed farm

economy forced Coleman's ranch into bankruptcy. First Down saved them. Coleman

entered 10 of First Down's sons in the 1998 stock show and won the grand

champion prize. Animals sired by First Down commanded a hefty premium at

auction. " He was our million-dollar bull, " Coleman said, exaggerating slightly.

The idea of cloning First Down was not obvious to Coleman.

 

The technology was still experimental at the time: The first calves cloned from

an adult cow were born in Japan in 1998. But as word of the breakthrough

spread, suggestions made their way to Charlo. A few months before First Down

died of natural causes, Coleman sent a small piece of the bull's ear to Infigen

Inc., a biotech company in DeForest, Wis. To clone an animal, scientists start

with a piece of ear skin and mince it up in a lab. Then they induce the cells

to divide in a culture dish until they forget they are skin cells and regain

their ability to express all of their genes. Meanwhile, the nucleus is removed

from a donor egg and placed next to a skin cell. Both are zapped with a tiny

electric shock, and if all goes well the egg grows into a genetic copy of the

original animal. The first two clones died. It took a couple of years, but three

healthy clones were delivered to Charlo in the spring of 2003. Soon after,

Coleman received a reassuring message on his answering machine from John

Matheson, a senior regulatory review scientist with the FDA's Center for

Veterinary Medicine. " A decision on whether or how to regulate them is probably

going to be into the early spring of '04, " Matheson said.

 

That would be just in time for Coleman's clones to reach sexual maturity. The

spring breeding season passed without a decision. The first batches of semen

stayed put in a freezer. Now, the melting snow reminds him that spring is

approaching again. " The breeding season is coming upon us, " he said, " and if you

don't hit that, you got to wait a whole year. " Cattle ranchers have long

embraced advanced reproductive technologies in their quest to efficiently

produce higher-quality milk and beef. In the 1960s, they began using frozen

semen and artificial insemination. Then, they employed in vitro fertilization.

Such techniques allow prized animals to pass on their desirable genes - but

they don't ensure those genes will make it to the next generation. " When you

breed animals, they only donate 50% of the DNA, and it's totally random, " said

Cindy Daley, a professor of animal science at Cal State Chico's College of

Agriculture. " Cloning takes the guesswork out of it. " A squad of First Downs,

fathering legions of desirable offspring, could raise the quality of the entire

Limousin breed. But as with any new technology, there are always unknowns.

 

Some scientists believe all cloned animals have subtle genetic defects that

arise from their unnatural start to life. Dolly the sheep, for example,

suffered from arthritis and died at an unexpectedly early age. The Japanese have

conducted the most thorough studies of cloned meat. The scientists, from the

Operation of Urgent Research for Utilization of Clone Technology, subjected

meat from cloned cattle to a battery of tests. They compared its chemical

composition to samples of regular beef. They analyzed amino and fatty acids.

They subjected pieces to simulated gastric and intestinal juices to measure

digestibility. They fed the meat to rats for 14 weeks and tracked their motor

activity, reflexes, grip strength and other characteristics.

 

Then they killed the rats and conducted autopsies. In a 2004 report, the

researchers concluded that there were " no significant biological differences "

between natural and cloned beef. The U.S. FDA began studying the safety of food

produced from cloned animals and their offspring in 2001. The agency

commissioned a report from the National Academy of Sciences, which found that

clones present " a low level of food safety concern " based on the limited data

available. The FDA issued a draft summary of its risk assessment in 2003,

concluding that cloned animals and their offspring posed no increased risk to

food safety. However, the FDA emphasized that it had " made no policy decision

that these products may be sold " and asked ranchers to voluntarily keep clones

and their offspring out of the food supply until a final decision was made.

 

FDA officials won't say when they expect that to happen or discuss other

aspects of their deliberations. The North American Limousin Foundation decided

on its own to include clones in its breed registry only if their owners refrain

from selling semen until the FDA signs off. Everyone assumed it would be a

short wait. " We were pretty confident that science would prevail in a timely

fashion, " Andersen said. Time is relative in a place like Charlo. Nestled in a

flat valley in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, it is a landscape where life

often seems measured more by season than by clock. Downtown Charlo is little

more than a widening in Montana Highway 212. There is a post office, a fire

department, a grocery store, a senior center, an Exxon station, Tiny's Tavern

and the M Bar 7 Cafe. Amber Doty, the cook, is a meat-eater in a community built

on cattle.

 

But the thought of cloned beef is just too futuristic for her. " It's just not

right to clone anything, " she said. Even if regulators declared the meat safe,

she wouldn't eat it. " You never know how well science works, " she said. Barry

Ambrose, who guides tourists on the Lewis and Clark Trail and prefers to eat

elk he kills with his own bow, hasn't caught up to the idea either. " I just

don't like fooling around with nature, " said Ambrose, son of the late historian

Stephen E. Ambrose. Such ambivalence in the heart of cattle country doesn't bode

well for those anticipating a favorable FDA decision. " The scientists and

ranchers always want to say it's just about the science, but it's not, " said

Foreman of the Food Policy Institute. " We have all sorts of emotional

attachments to our food. And to think that people are going to choose without

this question coming up - it's just not right. " Most ranchers are simply

exasperated. Out on the plains, where tens of millions of cows graze each year,

a steak is a steak is a steak. Ranchers and dairy farmers are losing patience

with the moratorium.

 

Frank Regan spent $65,000 to clone his prized Holsteins Dellia and Deborah.

Now, he has five clones producing nearly 500 pounds of milk each day at his

family farm in Waukon, Iowa. He can't sell the milk so he's diverting it to a

tank to feed calves. All he can do is wait for the FDA. " It's kind of like

taking a girl out for about 10 years and then telling her you're never going to

marry her, " he said. In August, Colby Collins of Frederick, Okla., will begin

delivering the first of 50 calves sired by a clone of Full Flush, a popular

Chianina bull from a nearby ranch. Collins could have bought semen from the

real Full Flush for $50 a straw. Instead, he paid just $20 for semen from one

of the five Full Flush clones. " When you can cut a dollar here and a dollar

there, you've got to do it, " he said. The calves will be sold to youngsters,

who will raise them for a year and enter them in county fairs and farm

competitions, collectively known as the club calf circuit.

 

The circuit has come to occupy an odd spot in the clone conflict. Everyone

knows the club calves will be sold for slaughter after their last turn in the

show ring. But no one likes to dwell on it. Don Coover, a vet and semen broker

in Galesburg, Kan., has promised two clone offspring to kids to raise for the

circuit. The FDA has no way to track them. " They will go into the food chain,

no question, in six or eight months, " he said. And that's just the beginning.

" I'm selling hundreds - maybe thousands - of units of semen from bulls that

were cloned, " he said.

 

" They're going to be slaughtered, and the FDA can't do anything about it. "

There is no way to distinguish calves fathered by clones from those fathered by

the original bull. A DNA analysis would reveal only that they have different

mothers. " If this turns into a crime, " Coover said, " it would truly be the

perfect crime. "

 

 

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