Clones Safe to Eat Says FDA
Ronald Bailey | January 15, 2008, 10:37am
The Washington Post is reporting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 968-page report will declare that meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs and goats are as safe to eat as foods from conventionally bred animals. According to the Post:
Scientists ... looked at nutrient levels in meat and milk from a few dozen cattle and pig clones and hundreds of their progeny, and compared them with values from conventional animals. They measured vitamins A, C, B1, B2, B6 and B12 as well as niacin, pantothenic acid, calcium, iron, phosphorous, zinc, 12 kinds of fatty acids, cholesterol, fat, protein, amino acids and carbohydrates including lactose.
For almost every measure, the values were virtually the same. The few that differed were still within the range considered normal.
Separately, the agency looked at studies in which milk and meat from clones were fed to animals for up to 3 1/2 months. There was no evidence of health effects, allergic reactions or behavioral changes.
Let's not forget that we have been eating clones for generations. Lots of fruits are clones, including grapes, bananas, and some varieties of apples.
The FDA may allow food produers to label their products as deriving from non-clones. Since at least some meats will derive from elite meat-producing animals, I personally will seek out cloned steaks when they become available.
The International Herald Tribune is reporting that European Food Safety Agency will approve meat and milk from cloned animals as safe to eat, too. This is good news for science-based decision-making, given that Europeans have often been ridiculously risk-averse when it comes to the food products derived from modern biotechnology.
Whole Post article here.
Bronwyn | January 16, 2008, 10:06am | #
Dave W., you're making an awfully big leap of faith in calling a single study published in JAMA (or even a couple of studies published in JAMA... or even two dozen studies published anywhere) sufficient "meat" to be called a theory.
As a scientist, I appreciate and thank you for your faith in us, but that's not how we roll.
1. Correlation is NOT causation: "high beef consumption is positively correlated with the incidence of colon cancer," is a fine correlative statement, but it doesn't mean anything substantive. It is, however, an okay place to start building your hypothesis.
2. So your hypothesis is, "beef consumption causes colon cancer." Good, now how do you test that? Your hypothesis isn't complete until you insert a How statement. What's the mechanism?
3. You could say, "beef consumption causes colon cancer because eaters of great quantities of beef build up [a particular substance which you think is relevant because you've done preliminary testing of preliminary hypotheses which indicate this substance may be involved] in their large intestines which enters the epithelial cells by [some other mechanism you have similarly defined by hypothesis, testing and validation] and causes [some complex molecular change in the DNA structure/nuclear envelope/some signalling pathway/some other biochemical mechanism] which leads to a loss of apoptosis and unregulated cell division (cancer)."
Good Job! Now your hypothesis is developed and you're ready to test it.
4. You weren't ready for this, were you? This is tough. Complex biochemical, genetic and molecular biological pathways take a long, long time to dissect. In the field, we do this by developing ever finer hypotheses, picking at each step of the mechanism, experimenting to determine how each pair of molecules interacts, gradually drawing a picture of what's going on.
And guess what? You're still not at a theory.
Why? Because only people who are trying to derive overarching general principles (evolution, string theory, relativity, etc.) get to have theories.
Those of us who deal with the nose-to-the-grindstone science stick to hypotheses because we know that the process of science is never finished and what you learn only leads to more questions - more hypotheses.
No one studying cancer or any other molecular process ever talks about "theory" because we're not talking about principles and ideas. We're talking about nuts and bolts - how molecules interact with each other in physical ways.
Ok? So stop with the theory talk already. It's an inappropriate use of the term.
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