To clone or not to clone? That is the question.

Many of you that are around me on a daily or even a weekly basis have realized that I talk about food a lot. Food has become a great topic of interest for me. It is quite amazing the things that not only go into our food, but the way the politics of food works.

We all have to eat to stay alive, we don't have that choice. We do have the choice about what we put into our mouth. I think that most people have no idea, nor do they care about what they eat and the industry that supplies this food to you plate.

One thing that I find intriguing is that we we may soon be eating the meat of cloned animals, if not already are. (There is some debate in regards to if these animals have made it into our food supply yet, if it has it is most likely in dairy products.) The FDA declared Tuesday, January 22, 2008 that cloned animals and their offspring are safe to eat. The first animal that was cloned occurred in 1996, Dolly the sheep. Funny how the acceptable cloned meat to eat currently excludes sheep, even though they have been cloning sheep longer than any other animal. Do we really have enough information about cloning animals to make the judgment that they are safe to eat? I'm not sure we do, as it is a relatively new technology.

I'm not sure I would eat cloned animals, at least not knowingly. I watched this movie in my History of Sexuality class, Evolution: Why Sex?, which discussed the aspect of genetic variation and how it is necessary for survival of a species. It addressed the subject with the description of these cute little fish that live in pools in the rural mountains of Mexico. There are 2 types of these fish, one type the produces offspring via the "normal sexual" route, and the other that produces little ones asexually, yup. . . asexually. What was interesting about this movie was not only that there is a species that produces offspring asexually, but the fact that these cute little fish that produced offspring with the absence of sex were infected with a parasite at a higher rate than those that produced little gametes via the traditional male/female interaction.

The reasoning behind this is because the little fish that have sex donate half their genetic code to their offspring, allowing for natural selection to take place. This allows for genetic variation, allowing genes that inhibit their well-being to disappear over time, and genes that are beneficial to their survival are able to flourish. The ones that produce offspring without sex, do not donate half their genetic code to their offspring, in fact their offspring are exact copies of their mother. This does not allow for natural selection to occur in this type of fish. The little fish, i wish i could remember the name of the breed, that do not have sex used to become infected with this parasite at higher rates than the sexual ones. Over the course of a year, the rate of parasitic infections became equal among the two types of fish. The researchers concluded that this was because the sexual fish started to inbreed and lose their genetic variation. To test their hypothesis, the researchers took fish from some of the other pools in the area and deposited the fish into the area where the parasitic infections where equal among asexual and sexual fish. Not to their surprise, the parasitic infection, again, began to infect the asexual fish at higher rates.

What does this have to do with cloned meat, you ask? Everything! If meat were to be cloned at high rates, than they, just like the fish, would become susceptible to infections and diseases that they may have originally developed immunities to. I also am not sure why we would decide to clone animals for the purpose of slaughtering and eating them, seems like a waste of money to me. Have cows stopped procreating? I'm pretty sure the have not.

The studies that have been completed, the ones the FDA used to base their statement about safety, were one that were administered by cloning companies. I would have to say that this is a definite conflict of interest. This is the tip of the iceberg, when we think about how food companies influence politics, but that is a whole other blog. The FDA also stated that meat products that were from cloned animals would not have to be labeled, but ones that are clone-free would need approval to label their product as such.

Admirers of the FDA's declaration, believe that cloning will help to uniform meat in all areas and provide consistent and better meat, than traditional meat. I don't notice the difference between a filet in Vons versus one purchased at Henry's, unless we are comparing free range grazing meat to grain fed cattle from meat packing plants.

I'll let you make the decision on this one. If you want a change, your voice has to be heard.

Until next time,

Micah