Clones for Dinner

So, was anyone surprised that the FDA told us cloned livestock is okay to eat because, "it is beyond our imagination to even find a theory that would cause the food to be unsafe," on the very same day they also pointed out that, "currently, it is not possible to draw any conclusions regarding the longevity of livestock clones or [the] possible long-term health consequences" of cloning?

If you have been paying attention to the way the FDA approves of new foods and drugs, you wouldn't be surprised. What the FDA is, essentially, saying is, sure, most clones are stillborn, or deformed and have unnervingly short lifespans, but we couldn't prove that the survivors produce unhealthy meat or milk, so the process must be okay. That may not be sound reasoning, but it is the same sort of reasoning the FDA usually uses.

As Margaret Mellon, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "The possibility remains that [clones] may harbor subtle genetic defects that could ... make them unsafe for consumption." The truth is we don't know whether cloned livestock produces safe food or not, but we do know that biotech companies want cloned animals on the market, so the FDA is going to let them do it.

Why?

Good question. Livestock doesn't seem to be experiencing any reproductive crises. They're still, happily, creating offspring the same way they always have. And consumers can't see what's so great about these high-tech Frankenfoods either. Despite the poorly-publicized nature of the FDA's investigation, people sent in more than 150,000 complaints about the prospect of genetically-manipulated livestock before the agency had even made a decision.

But the FDA can't seem to figure out how this is any of our business. So the agency decided that food from clones and their offspring will not be labeled as such, preventing consumers, and even distributors, from choosing between cloned or natural meat and dairy products. Most unsettling of all, the lack of labeling will also make it much more difficult for researchers to discover whether or not the clones actually are causing problems in our food supply.

No doubt, biotech firms are very happy with these decisions. Even though cloning livestock may not provide consumers with any real benefits, it will, almost certainly, benefit gene-suppliers. As Henry Ford discovered, quite some time ago, uniformity means efficiency, which means more money for less effort and more market power for competitors to contend with. And, as the software industry figured out, not so long ago, patents mean more money from licensing, and more uniformity, which means a lot more market power to squash competitors with. Uniform, patented, livestock is a biotech company's dream, and a rancher's nightmare.

What we do know about animal cloning, at this point, is that the few animals who survive the process tend to be sickly and short-lived, and ranchers who feel the need to use them will have to contend with their health problems for as long as they survive. Worse still, the marketing advantages that patented strains of livestock give biotech firms will push ranchers into purchasing, and using, these clones — just as farmers have needed to use patented crop strains — no matter how expensive buying and caring for them might be, and no matter whether the ranchers actually want to use them or not, because — just like the farmers — they'll have problems selling their livestock to processors and distributors otherwise. An Italian agricultural union has already promised to "mobilize strongly" against the sale of cloned livestock, if it occurs in Europe.

Even if cloned animals or their offspring really are safe to eat, and, even if consumers and ranchers could, somehow, choose to not buy or raise cloned animals, having large numbers of nearly-identical animals in the food supply still poses a serious risk to all of us.

Monocultures, like the ones biotech companies would like to create, are notoriously fragile. When only one strain of an organism is cultivated in a community, then, when that strain is attacked by any pathogen it happens to be susceptible to, the entire community falls prey. They have none of the genetic variety that would allow many members of the species to survive. We've already seen this happen, repeatedly, with crops. The Irish, for instance, grew only one variety of potato in the 19th century because that variety produced good yields in bad soil. But when a fungus attacked it, the entire nation's potato crop died out in only two years, creating a famine that took more than a million lives. Other varieties of potato were not susceptible to the fungus, but that didn't matter, because the Irish weren't cultivating them. The same sort of thing happened with a strain of grapes in France and also with a strain of corn in America. In all cases, the human and economic losses would have been much less severe had farmers not felt the need to use what were, essentially, cloned crops.

Cloning may, very well, prove to be useful in medicine or other fields. One day, we may even be able to clone mammals without the sort of problems our current methods create. But even when that day arrives, we should still be very careful about what clones are used for and what the consequences of those uses might be. We might all like to think that regulatory agencies such as the FDA will protect our society from hazardous business practices, the way they're supposed to, but until regulators change their standards for approval from "we can't prove it's dangerous" to "we can prove it's safe," we should all pay very close attention to what sort of products businesses want to push on the market. And all of us should be worried when our governments ignore our, genuine, concerns in favor of a few corporations', monetary, concerns.