Cloned Animals at Least as Tasty as Regular Animals

By Sean Corbett in News on Dec 29, 2006 9:17PM

The FDA has preliminarily approved the sale and consumption of foods derived from cloned animals. People are a little freaked out that they might end up eating the stuff. In reference to telling the difference between products from cloned animals versus normal animals, geneticists say: “There is not an analytical, scientific test you can use to tell one from another.” Of course any of the really ugly diseases (like mad cow) that take years to manifest themselves and are almost undetectable would not have been picked up by the FDA’s tests. We understand why some are proposing “clone-free” and similar labels on their foodstuffs.

"Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day" said the FDA. This lead to the general question “who the heck wants to buy cloned meat?” in the blog-o-sphere. We at Chicagoist wonder who the heck can taste the difference? For all we know there could be cloned meat in supermarkets right now. Chinese biotech firms have been growing cloned meat stock for several years now, somebody probably ate those animals when they were fully grown. Just imagine how good a steak would taste if you knew you were eating an animal which took many thousands of dollars to create, all those somatic cells and nuclear transfers… probably better than Kobe beef.

Thanks to Skepsis for the image!