Imagine that you’re eating a hamburger. Now imagine that you learn the meat came from a cloned cow. Some of us would continue eating and some would not, but the Food and Drug Administration is now expecting consumers to purchase and eat food without receiving this information. After six years of study, the FDA ruled on Jan. 15 that meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs, and goats are safe for consumption.
Apprehension about reproductive cloning has been growing since the “birth” of Dolly the sheep in 1996, and books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma raise concern about food production with in-depth descriptions of the factory farm industry. However, the FDA’s decision gives rise to a set of concerns separate from unease about agribusiness and reproductive cloning.
The FDA says meat from clones is as safe as the food we eat every day. Never mind the FDA’s checkered history—they said nothing about feeding pieces of cow carcasses to other cows, which led to mad cow disease. And never mind that much of the data used in the FDA’s study of cloned meat came from the cloning companies themselves. In the study, no significant differences were found between normal meat and meat from cloned animals. But to conclude from this that the meat is safe, one must be confident that scientists know everything there is to know about the physiology of a cow and about the effects of meat on consumers. Nothing anyone could say would completely allay my concerns about cloned meat because I know there is not enough information to form a definite conclusion. No amount of study will prove that science’s picture is complete, so unknown or undetectable factors present or missing in this meat are not only conceivable but likely. Moreover, reproductive cloning is only 12 years old, so no data is available on the long-term effects of these products on consumers.
Even if cloned meat is safe to eat, there are other consequences to consider. Moral arguments are of little use here, given the way we already treat farm animals, but it is unclear why the serious taboo against human reproductive cloning should not apply at all to animals. Of more direct concern is the impact this could have on our food supply if it becomes widespread. Selective breeding preserves the genetic diversity of a species, but widespread cloning puts this diversity at risk. For now, the number of clones is small enough that this danger is minimal, but as the process becomes less expensive, cloning could supplant current artificial insemination techniques if there is no regulation. It doesn’t take a biologist to realize that a herd of cattle all with the same genetic makeup would be ill-prepared for epidemics and would have a hard time producing a new generation, if cloning technology were made unavailable (for example, if cloned meat were found to be unsafe).
Objections to reproductive cloning are not the result of technophobia, nor do they come from a lack of knowledge about the process. Examining cloned meat under a microscope to look for harmful features is missing the forest for the trees. The natural reproductive process, regardless of how or why you believe it developed, was millions of years in the making and is central to the survival of every species. Again, everything about this process is not completely understood, so tampering with it would be reckless even if cloning technology did not belong to the ever-suspect category of profit-driven science. And now, as if the very existence of cloned animals is not unsettling enough, we are expected to buy meat and milk without knowing whether it came from a clone. Worse yet, cloned animals will be allowed to breed without regulation, so as time goes by, the number of cows without cloned ancestors will gradually diminish.
Cloned meat and milk are being kept off the market for the time being in order to gauge public reaction to the announcement. But when this moratorium is lifted, the FDA will not require special labels on products from cloned animals or their offspring. The FDA’s decision effectively forces these products on everyone with safety concerns as well as everyone with ethical or religious objections to cloning. Even if you have no issues with reproductive cloning, understand the suspicions about this untested technology, and recognize that the lack of identifying labels jeopardizes the right to choose for oneself whether to eat these products or not.
There is still hope for worried consumers who do not want to turn vegetarian: meat and milk from clones will not be certified as organic. The Department of Agriculture has yet to rule on whether products from cloned animals’ offspring can be called organic—but if it decides they cannot, many people may turn to organic meat rather than risk eating meat and milk from clones or their offspring.
The FDA is asking for citizens’ views on cloned meat, but the ruling is not likely to be changed. As with any questionable food production practice, the only defense against cloned meat is increased personal responsibility for the food one eats. If you care whether your food comes from clones, find out which companies supply your grocery store, your favorite restaurants, and Columbia dining services, and whether these companies deal in cloned products. Making use of this information, we can vote with our forks against the latest advance in artificial agriculture.
The author is a junior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in applied physics and applied mathematics.