Cloned Food is Safe Says FDA

Posted by Cyndi Allison Jan 19, 2008

For several months the FDA has been supporting the cloning of farm animals. The most recent report from the FDA states that cloned food is safe. The FDA has, however, put the project on "delay" due to public reactions.

I don't think that cloned food is inherently unsafe. I can also see how cloning could be beneficial in some ways. The most often cited is that dairy farmers could clone cows who are high milk producers and produce more milk with fewer cows.

I, like many others, do have concerns about cloning within our food supply community.

If we become very selective in breeding, then the gene pool becomes limited. While cloned animals have been hearty, any animal could potentially have vulnerabilities. If we clone and have a large number of animals with the same genetic make up, then some "super bug" that animals with other genetic codes might be able to tolerate could wipe out our engineered "perfect" animals.

It's also a shame to weed out various "strains" (for lack of a better word) in the animal community. We've done this with our fruits and vegetables. There are far fewer varieties of apples today due to selective growing. The apples we opt to save are not always the best tasting. They are the apples that grow easily and transport well.

When we try to control nature, we often do more harm than good. I was watching 60 Minutes and they discussed forest fires. In the early 1900s, we were able to control fires much more effectively. This seemed like a good thing. Now, we have massive fires, since smaller fires did not clear out the underbrush. Our intervention caused more problems down the line, and I fear that cloning animals will turn out to be a short term solution with long term problems.