We can't trust suppliers not to poison our food supply now, or the FDA to properly regulate anything. I eat very little meat now and try to be picky about the milk I drink, if any at all. Anything cloned would never touch my kitchen table!
Of course, this will cause prices to go up on any un-cloned meat and milk, just as anything healthy drains the pocketbook now.

The cost to clone an animal is a pretty hefty bill (at least $15,000+ just for the cloning process whereas an uncloned heifer calf runs about $400 depending on the market), so there are not a lot of animals out there that are cloned. I doubt there would be much price difference because the amount of milk/meat from cloned animals simply is a very, very small percentage and the likelihood that you are consuming milk/meat from cloned animals is a very, very small percentage as well.

I'm pretty sure there's a moratorium on cloned animals in the food supply right now.

Yes, there seems to be. But the plan (on the part of the industry which thinks it's making concessions) is to allow cloned-animal offspring in:
--d

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There has been a moratorium for over some time now but that means that the milk from these cows is being dumped somewhere. (if we believe they are obeying the moratorium) Do we know how the FDA is monitoring the situation, so that these "industry" farmers comply? Transgenics began in 1990. There are herds of cloned cows--Blacksburg, Virginia,in New York State, California, Canada (Montreal area), Finland, New Zealand. New York Times writer Nicholas D. Kristoff visited a farm in Deforest, Wisconsin (Infigen). The article is dated July 23, 2002 and called "Interview With a Humanoid." He said he drank the cloned milk there and "he didn't grow two heads." I have researched this since 2000 and Finland according to various biotech companies based in the Netherlands has herds of cloned cows (2000-4000 cows depending on articles written). The cloned cows are being used to make pharmaceutical protein-based drugs. Many of these proteins are human milk proteins. These specific protein milks (more human, therefore thought to be less allergenic) will be used in the infant formula industry to make a milk more like human milk. I can't imagine that farmers have been dumping this milk for years and certainly I would want to know what steps have been taken to protect the environment.

I guarantee that these pharma cows milk is NOT going into a general milk supply so no worries there. The amount of money one can make from this type of milk is huge but so is the bill for cloning 2000 cows. Selling this milk for the specific proteins and other properties makes this far from a commodity that would be on the grocery store's shelf.

What evidence do you have that cloned milk is not on the shelves of grocery stores now? Is someone testing the milk to make sure that cloned milk is not in the mix of of regular milk? And what kind of test would that be? Who is monitoring new ingredients in baby formulas? The FDA believes that genetically engineered substances are equivalent to the real thing. Wyeth is now advertising alpha proteins in their infant formula. Cows don't have this particular protein in their milk, only the human mammary gland makes this particular protein. How do you create this particular protein in cow's milk? Transgenics. Wyeth was partnered with PPL Therapeutics in the UK (the people who created the cloned Sheep, Dolly (created by merging the DNA from the mammary cell of one kind of sheep with an egg cell of another kind of sheep--mammary cells are stem cells) PPL had a contract with Wyeth to produce this alpha protein. PPL Therapeutics had a partnership with Virginia Tech and the Blackburg farm of cloned cows. PPL has folded as a company but the farm still exists as does the keen interest of the infant formula industry in making an infant formula close to human milk. The initial investment in cloning cows would be huge but once these cloned animals produce babies similiar to themselves, the investment cost would go down and be similiar to any other dairy farm. Human infants will be the guinea pigs to cloned milk. You may choose to believe that cloned milk and meat is not on your grocery shelves being sold to consumers. I think the evidence points in a different direction.

Perhaps the cloned milk is going into infant formula but not the general milk supply as I said. Economically speaking, it does not make sense to put pharma-milk into the general milk supply. That would be similar to an organic farmer shipping their milk to a conventional plant---why spend that extra money to be transgenic/organic if you aren't going to profit from it? It doesn't make sense to do that.
Simply put if mothers breast-fed their babies, they don't need to worry about this and it is the most natural way to feed the baby.

Also, how could you test for cloned products? Genetically, the animals are the same and therefore, how are you going to distinguish the difference?

Very few women in the USA and around the world exclusively breastfed their babies. This has alot to do with how infant formula is marketed. Free samples, coupons, and hospitals that give it away to mothers are in part responsible for low rates of exclusives breastfeeding (2%). Statistically the least educated, the poorer mothers do not breastfeed their babies. Are you saying we shouldn't care about this situation because if mothers knew better they would breastfeed their babies? I find that a troubling statement, if that is what you meant. One could say that about pesticides in our foods. We shouldn't worry about it because we have organic food. The assumption is that we have a level playing field in the choices of what foods we eat and whether or not we breastfeed.

A cloned animal, whose DNA has been manipulated, is not the same as the animal whose DNA has been left alone. Genetically engineered soybeans are not the same as a regular soybeans...the DNA has been changed. We have tests to detect genetically engineered soy in products. I would assume that the milk of a cloned animal would have some human DNA within it. I am sure scientists can figure out a test for it. What evidence do you have that cloned animals are identical to animals that haven't been cloned? This certainly is the stance of the biotech industry as well as the FDA but most scientists involved in genetic engineering know that splicing and dicing DNA is not an exact science. Why be concerned about cloning, if you believe that the cloned cow is equivalent to a normal cow?

Not the same as genetic manipulation.

When you break a branch off of an ivy plant and put it in water to root it, you are cloning the parent plant- not manipulating the genetic makeup of the ivy.

That said, I still don't want clones in my food, because I don't want my food messed with in a laboratory before I eat it.

When someone breakes a branch of an ivy plant and puts it into water to root, it is called plant propagation. "An Introduction of Genetic Engineering" by Desmond Nicholl (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2002) defines clone. "Used as a verb to describe the generation of recombinants." Recombinant DNA is "A DNA molecule made up of sequences that are not normally joined together." When one puts a branch of ivy in water, that person is not changing the sequence of the DNA of the ivy. If they have PCR equipement and chemical enzymes that cut and splice DNA, then they would be cloning. Currently, clone is often used as a slang word meaning duplication. Technically, cloning is not just duplication but duplication through the rearrangement of DNA. Thus cloned milk and meat would have human gene fragments if human genes were used in the initial merging of DNA. One can see how this would lead to grave ethical and moral objections by various religions. When we ingest cloned milk or meat (cloned with human DNA), are we in fact being cannibals? What does it mean to cross the species boundaries and eat and drink of an animal that has human DNA? Normal genetics, plant propagation cannot cross the species boundaries this way.

You are speaking of different terms here---cloning and genetic engineering. There are different types of cloning---if you are referring to transgenics, yes their DNA has been altered (as in the case of the human DNA put into to make infant formula). There are also clones created to have the identical makeup because the initial animal has some trait(s) to offer (no foreign DNA from a plant, human, etc are used---only the animal being cloned's DNA is used). Genetically-engineered soybeans(i.e. Round-Up Ready Soybeans) are altered for a specific desirable trait but if you were to clone the soybean, it would have the identical makeup as the initial plant. Round up ready soybeans aren't a clone---they are a genetically modified version of soybeans.

But we don't *know* that. We know it in theory and by definition because that's what "clone" means, but we don't really know what's going on at a DNA level. (And it sounds like it takes *other* DNA to induce the split of cloning ...?) In a world where science says it "inserts" certain genes in a certain location in DNA, when in truth it scattershoots genetic material and hopes some sticks, we can say with equal assurance the clone has "identical makeup." IOW, there is no assurance. But there are certainly someinteresting lies, and a lot of subterfuge. --diana

I think language/terminology can either open doors to understanding or they can be used to close those doors. The medical community has their own language and people seeking medical assistance often find that language impossible to understand. The same can be said about the various sciences. They have their language/their terminology and when the non-initiated try to venture within the realm of that communication they become lost.

I did look up cloning and was very interested in the fact that in horticulture the word, clone, has been used for some time. You have tuaght me something new today . I must have been sleeping in my classes when they discussed this. I thought it was asexual reproduction. But then I am in my fifties and my classes in biology were many years ago.

I feel a level of confusion in this discussion. I believed that within genetic engineering is the technique of cloning, gene cloning to be specific. A few years back I had an interesting email discussion with the FDA regarding DHA and whether or not it was genetically engineered. The FDA called DHA a novel ingredient. In some books on genetic engineering,novel means genetically engineered. Yet, the FDA implied that the DHA was not genetically engineered. Martek's patents state the use of mutant and recombinant organisms. The argument hinged on how the FDA choose to define genetically engineered and how I viewed the words recombinant and mutant.

I feel like I am having a similiar discussion regarding cloning. When we are talking about cloned milk and meat are we talking genetic engineering? Or are people believing we are talking asexual reproduction? I have seen the patents on the use of transgenics on dairy cows. I'd say we are talking genetic engineering in which gene cloning is involved.

I used to work in a botany lab. I picked up a lot of terms that way, especially since I had free access to their very technical library.

But I won't pretend to know exactly what goes on when they clone animals. I just know I don't want to eat anything that had it's origins in a test tube.

I am an IBCLC (which stands for International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) doing research on human milk component patents (some 2000 patents and applications at the US Patent & Trademark Office). I have been told by others in my profession that my belief that there are herds of transgenic dairy cows is speculation. I don't think so because of articles like the following in Virginia Business dated August 1997 and called "Deja Moo."
http://www.gatewayva.com/biz/virginiabusin...ug97/cover.html

The article is about Virginia Tech/PPL partnership in transgenics. PPL Theraupeutics is/was a British corporation known for Dolly, the cloned sheep. (cloned in part from a mammary cell--why called Dolly in tribute to Dolly Parton, mammary cells are considered totipotent stem cells)

"The 'mad cow' disease that plagued herds in Britain was another reason the company brought its cow research to Blacksburg. PPL also expected that in rural Virginia it would have less trouble with animal-rights activists and other critics of its work."

"The cow project is part of PPL's long-term collaboration with the Wyeth-Ayerst Divison of American Home Products. Rosie and her fellow cows have produced the human porteins alpha-lactalbumin, an important nutritional protein rich in amino acids and particularly useful in feeding premature babies."

Wyeth in 2006 started advertising their added alpha proteins to their infant formulas. Cows make very little alpha-lactalbumin (not feasible to produce in large scale according to patents). Thus the question is how is Wyeth getting these alpha proteins? Transgenics makes it supposedly feasible. So in my opinion, cloned milk is already on the market in a can of infant formula.

The end of the article has an interesting comment by Julian Cooper, general manager of PPL in Blackburg.

"The transgenics live with a bunch of other cows and just wander around the farm eating top-quality cow feed and drinking nice, clean water. "All we do,' Cooper says, 'is milk them.'

They have been milking transgenic cows since 1997. These cows are obviously mixed with non-transgenic cows. I can't picture any dairy farmer dumping cloned milk for some 10 years. The public believes that transgenics is in the early stage of development with no products on the market. Subterfuge and lies or just business and some interesting PR?
Valerie

I'm not the usual "public" I stay on top of the issues, and I know that transgenics are very wide spread.

Of the several articles a day I post at this forum, I actually have a couple hundred articles a day to choose from. And there are probably another one or two hundred that I miss.

I'm confused on the scope of 'cloning.' In the media, it is perceived as being a relatively simple process that involves making a set of cells split and then create a whole new being owing to cell division. No different genes are involved; in fact, no medium that has any other genetic material is involved in any way. Now, is this not true? What *is* involved in cloning, really?

I read the article about the Virginia Tech cows, and there was nothing in there about cloning. The herd in question was transgenic -- in fact it had human genes inserted in order to create some new products ... human proteins in cow's milk, it appears. The poor yearling heifer they named Rosie hasn't actually calved; no, they artificially induced her to create milk. Fake-fake milk. Hope that's not getting into the food supply.

Something I found from our gov'mint that admits that clones are NOT identical copies:


See: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Huma...ng.shtml#whatis

Further reading informs that Dolly has died -- of cancer, and prematurely, too.


Yep, cloned animals are NOOOOOOO different than the originals. Whatever. wow. --diana

Dolly was cloned.
http://www.coldmeadow.com/dolly/adstory/story.html

Dolly is also considered a transgenic animal. See Nature Biotechnology October 1997
http://www.biotech-monitor.nl/3609.htm

Cloned milk and meat are created through gene cloning (one of several techniques used in genetic engineering). The FDA and the biotech industry would like everyone to believe that this is normal and natural duplication. It is an artificial technique...this technique crosses species boundaries. This crossing is a dangerous game. Certain diseases would never cross the species barriers but we have opened the door or should I say cell wall. This is an open invitation to creating diseases in humans that have never existed before. And guess who gets to be first in line for this experiment...infants/preterm infants.

Dolly is both a clone and a transgenic animal.
Valerie

Valerie, thank you for the clarification, and the bit of background info, but I think I still have some confusion about gene cloning and/ or transgenic cloning. The article I posted the URL for uses *reproductive* cloning as the 'Dolly' case, but does discuss gene cloning as something different (specifically different from the 'Dolly' issue or instance). Is 'transgenic' something entirely different than 'gene cloning'? The article you cite most recently (Nature Biotechnology) has this to say (that Dolly *was* transgenic, as implied by sticking her story under that heading):


The ornl-government site I posted says this:


Am I confusing 'transgenic' and 'gene cloning'?



At any rate, did you catch the bit where Ron James speaks of cloning as "a step toward immortality" instead of the the arrogant idiocy it is? And all this was back in 1997?