Roaming Cattle
When you go to the grocery store to buy that nice steak you have dreamed about all day, you probably want to know the grade and the color of the meat your about to buy. Do ever you question if it is the original cow? You probably don’t but this post might give you second thoughts.
Recently, the EU has started debates about whether cloned meat products should be sold to the general public. Yes, I said cloned meat which means in its original form the meat was a cloned cow. The U.S. has already jumped on board with this “original” idea of selling cloned meat to the public.You may be wondering why we are not hearing about this debate. No worries, the USDA decided back in 2008 that cloned meat is safe enough to put on our dinner plates.
In January 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, after years of study, said it found no inherent safety problems with meat or milk from cow, goat or pig clones or their offspring. (The FDA didn’t have enough information to weigh in on sheep.) It also lifted a long-standing voluntary moratorium on putting such meat and milk on the market while it studied clones.
The problem is we have no idea if the meat product we are buying is cloned meat. Meat manufacturers do not have to put this little piece of information on their labels which keeps consumers completely in the dark. Yes, the USDA conducted studies and found no safety problems. Do we really believe this? Lets remember, there were studies conducted on growth hormone (rBST) that concluded the hormone was safe. Years later the hormone is close to being completely banned from the U.S. market after seeing the effects on cattle. We still do not know what the growth hormone may have done to humans.
The issue is that we do not know we are consuming cloned meat and we should have this knowledge. Our food is getting to the point where even the animals themselves are being”processed” and that fact is not appetizing. So as you sit to enjoy that fine grade of red meat, you may ask..is this meat an original or a copy? As for me, I will enjoy my salad.
Article is from SlashFood
