Cloned Livestock Produce in EU

¶ … Cloned livestock produce in EU market

Behind the Headlines:

The Ethics of Cloned Food

Online clip: FSA admits more clone-linked beef in UK food chain (04th August 2010) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10873202

Summary of case: After a farm in Scotland was found to have introduced the cloned beef of one of its bulls onto the market for human consumption, an official investigation was launched by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The farmers imported two bull embryos from America who were the offspring of a cloned animal, which is an animal whose DNA has been duplicated to exactly that of its parent. The farm maintains that they were within their right to distribute the meat and the FSA admits that because the technology surrounding cloning is new, rules are not in place to prevent it. They further admitted that they didn't know how much cloned meat was available in the UK and that if farmers didn't provide the appropriate paperwork to document the origins of their meat, they were at a loss to prevent its distribution. Farmers think that Europe is behind in the movement to genetically modify (and therefore improve) food and that consumer distrust in their operations will increase as a result of the debate.

Discussion of Ethical Issues: Society has a complex relationship with cloning, a term that both scares and intrigues us. It represents an unknown future, which might be a panacea where disease can be eradicated or a nightmare in which people and animals are churned out of labs like robots and used as commodities with callous disregard for their well-being. It is out of this discomfort that the debate over genetically modified, and in this specific case, cloned food has arisen. The public wants more disclosure and a say in the distribution (or banning thereof) of these products, whereas the farming industry and the scientific community advocates its continuation.

Excessive regulation, and in the extreme a ban, on cloned food could be seen as anti-science. The pushback against introducing new food technology like this into our homes is counter-intuitive, giving the amount of non-food technology that we interact with on an everyday basis as modern consumers (the flat screen television, the smart phone, etc.). It must be mentioned that farmers have been using technology to enhance their production for many years, a lot of which would be considered "unnatural" by traditionalists. Farmers say "cloning is just another breeding technique, like artificial insemination or invitro fertilization" (Pollack and Martin, 2006). The fact is, this technology makes the lives of farmers easier, and farming is a profession which is less and less profitable in our modern age.

In addition, cloning meat has not been proven unsafe. In fact, in a recent article by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration meant to debunk consumers' false ideas about cloning, the organization stated that "after years of detailed study and analysis, FDA has concluded that meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals" (2009). So the question becomes whether we are just uncomfortable with the idea of cloning, or perhaps the word itself?

As a counter-argument, we may not yet have a good enough understanding of cloning, a relatively new technology, to determine how safe or unsafe it is. In his article, Derek Burke posits that "consumers' biggest concern is about risk, especially in light of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy epidemic: scientists, and the regulatory processes, are no longer trusted" (1998). This distrust in the system, both on a scientific and governmental level, is deep-rooted, in that food is part of the human experience which is personal and even intimate. People want to be able to trust their food providers. Therefore there is fear that just because cloned beef appears as edible as non-cloned beef does not guarantee that an animal with defects harmful for human consumption might be cloned (and that clone cloned, and so on), unleashing greater harm over a wider array of people than even the BSE or Foot and Mouth epidemics impacted.

The arguments against cloning have a lot to do with our collective fear not of the meat itself, but also the implications of cruelty to both animals in the present and people in the future. When asked the majority of people say that they are "opposed to cloning animals, let alone eating them. Some also said that cloning causes harm to the animals involved and could pave the way for human cloning" (Pollack and Martin, 2006). Cloning is not only a food practice that is questionable, but its place as a scientific practice in general is what is up for debate.