Cloned Beef Safety
US - FDA approval of cloned beef comes almost two years after release of a study showing that meat and milk from cloned cattle meet industry standards. As a video from ScienCentral News explains, it's one of several studies regarding cloned cuisine.
29 December 2006
1 minute read
In 1997 a cloned sheep named DollyDolly brought the issue of cloning to the public's attention. Then it was quickly proven that other animals, including pigs and cows, could also be cloned. But, it still had to be proven that it was safe to consume products from cloned animals.
In a study published in 2005 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Xiangzhong "Jerry" Yang, director of the Center for Regenerative Biology at the University of Connecticut, found that meat from two cloned bulls and a thousand samples of milk from cloned Holstein Dairy Cows meet industry standards for beef and milk from naturally produced cattle.
The study was more than just curiosity, because as Yang points out, "One of the applications for cloning farmed animals, including cattle, pigs is really for improving agriculture, for better milk production, for better meat production." But, until the FDA approval, no country had allowed consumption or marketing of products from cloned animals.
Source: ScienCentral News
