Food Fridays: Cloned Food by the Numbers

This week the FDA announced that cloned food is safe to eat.

I’ve heard about 210 articles–literally all the articles that Google News listed. I’m still forming my opinion on the matter. My initial reaction is that the food is safe to eat, but there are ethical and environmental problems in cloning since the animals often die prematurely and there are negative consequences to reducing biodiversity.

Per my motto, I want to give you the facts and let you mind your decisions.

Here are most important numbers from the stories.

3 fruits -apples, bananas, grapes-are often clones–the Reason Blog

70% of foodstuffs contains genetically modified products–AFP

6 years of research on safety of consuming cloned meat–NPR

3 research reports from the FDA about Cloning–FDA

30,500 comments on the FDA risk study–NY Times

600 cloned animals in America–Detroit Free Press

200 million farm animals in America–Sydney Morning Herald

$17,000 to clone a cow–The Chicago Tribune

$1,000 is the market price of a cow–Ibid.

4-5 years before meat from clones hits the market–Reuters

2 companies are leaders in cloning animals–The Money Times

$20 billion business projected for cloned animals–CNN Money

60% of Americans think cloning animals is wrong–AFP

1 opinion: cloning advocates should favor labeling–The Economist

Is there an important number I left out? Write a comment and share.



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  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    Lose of biodiversity is a *Huge* risk, while not quite cloning, all “modern” bananas more or less come from very common ancestors:

    http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0719-02.htm

    And some alarmists feel the world’s population of bananas could easily be wiped out by a single threat.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    The banana news is scary. Ironically, it seems our only hope is to genetically engineer a disease-resistant banana.

  • chris chow

    It seems that much of the opposition to cloned food comes from fear of unintended consequences of consuming/raising/etc cloned plants or animals.

    There are some seeming parallels to why we don’t see much irradiated food in supermarkets today. The FDA gave full approval for irradiation of products like ground beef, etc. It essentially takes your risk of eating rare hamburger down to the risk of eating rare juicy steak.

    Would I eat cloned food? Yes — only if it were less expensive but of the same quality as non cloned food products. I honestly don’t think i would pay extra for it — but i *would* frankly be willing to pay extra for irradiated meat because it would let me prepare/eat things like steak tartare with much more peace of mind.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    @Chris Chow–Good point about the irradiated food. I was reading something that people see risk as a simple equation: risk = hazard + control. We accept that the hazard of cloned foods and irradiated foods is low, but we feel bad to give up control. Same reason why people don’t like flying but are fine with driving (both have the same per hour hazard, but driving gives a sense of control).

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