Cloned Mac and fries please

Cloned meat has made front page news this morning. Essentially, the story in a well known national newspaper, discusses the imminent decision of the FSA to follow America and class meat and milk from cloned animals as safe following the results from an independent study. ‘Cloned meat is safe’ said by chief scientist Andrew Wadge at the FSA. Well maybe not quite in those words, but it certainly could be interpreted that way. What he actually said regarding the study was “there was no substantial difference found between the milk and meat from cloned cattle compared to conventionally produced meat and milk. Therefore it is unlikely to present a food safety risk.” This paves the way for the FSA to agree its safety and grant a license. So does this expected move by the FSA, giving the green light to cloned produce, reassure the general public? Also, what actually is cloned meat and milk? What are the fears and failures? What are the potential benefits?

Cloning arguably hit main stream media in the mid 1990’s with ‘Dolly’ the sheep. Since then various animals have been cloned; cats, dogs, monkeys, horses, camels and of course cattle. The general process involves nuclear transfer. Basically you remove the DNA from an unfertilised ‘egg cell’ (oocyte) inject into the nucleus with DNA (cloned) and implant into a female uterus. This sounds a lot easier than it actually is. Aside from the technical difficulty, a significant scientific issue is that the cloned offspring would have shortened telomeres. In theory this results in an accelerated aging rate with higher instances of cancers in the cloned animal. This point has not gone un-noticed by groups such as the RSPCA who fear that cloned animals have a greatly reduced quality of life because of their artificial inception.

If cloning of livestock wasn’t enough to upset those seeking natural foods, the next step is the artificial production of meat, and this has already begun. There are three main positives in the synthesis of artificial meat; it seems the ideal way to overcome the CO₂ and methane impact, with the UN estimating 18% of the world’s current greenhouse gases are attributable to livestock. Laboratory meat may also be a potential solution to global hunger, especially in regions where grazing land is unavailable. Finally it also has less of a social and moral impact for some groups, PETA, the animal rights group, stated they have “no ethical objection” to artificially synthesised meat, with there being no animal involved.

The ‘frankenstein’ produce from the livestock has a fear attached to it due to it being un-natural. This is something I can understand. But when one thinks of the farming and food production methods that have been used for years – selective breeding, pesticides, hot-housing, fertilisers, GM crops, stabilisers, flavour enhancers (the list goes on) The amount of ‘natural’ food available in any mainstream supermarket is minimal at best. It is the uncertainty that generates fear... well that and scaremongering by various media sources.

Although this is far from ‘natural’ I would be reassured knowing exactly what I was eating, synthesised in a lab or not.