Do You Have a Fear Of Clones?

One of the news items that seems to have generated the most buzz on the bioethics blogs is this week's decision by the FDA to allow the sale of meat from cloned animals -- we've posted on it, blog.bioethics.net has, the Business Ethics Blog has, and Art Caplan has written a column on it. And now, an Rick Weiss of the Washington Post reports that consumer groups are pressing for labeling, but the concern is that the labels may not be able to be verified. Additionally, the article reports, consumer groups are wondering "how the FDA will live up to its promise to keep an eye on the quickly evolving field of animal cloning and protect the public from unexpected problems."

It seems to me that Art says it all when he says "Don't ask, don't tell is bad policy for cloned food" (or any food, I might add) and that consumers will have the last word.

Goats in the Road and their cloned CAFO cousins

Some notes from my recent travels:
I'm spending some time with my husband, Kim, in Timor Leste, where he is working on a land tenure property rights program; it is a poor but naturally beautiful country, struggling to regain its independence after a long term occupation. During his pre-dawn jogs, Kim is amused to encounter herds of goats clustered in twos and threes, nestled together in road determined to enjoy last few moments of their nights' rest. They barely flick an ear as he weaves between them, appearing to be no more than darker shadows in the dim morning light; they know the road belongs to them, at least until the break of day. This pre-dawn sedentary determination belies their youthful exuberance during the day. I think of their american cousins in the CAFOs, the FDA's approval of the sale of cloned meat, and it prompts me to consider the relative quality of life of the livestock in Timor Leste as compared to the livestock in the Industrial Food Chain in the US.

What strikes me is that we, in the US, while priding ourselves in the humane treatment of our companion animals, turn a blind eye towards the cruelty of the livestock in our industrial food chains, our CAFOs -- the CAFOs that feed the fast food, cheap food, sugary food industry, arguably the food industry chain that is eroding the quality of life of humans in the US.

My observation is that the goats, pigs, cows, and chickens in Timor Leste have a much more interesting, satisfying, and likely, longer lives than their supposedly "free range" US cousins.

While not meaning to diminish the extreme poverty of the human condition in Timor Leste, the everyday presence of the goats, pigs, cows, and chickens are a reminder that we can learn something about importance of recognizing our interconnectedness and the potential dangers of disconnection and disassociation -- and about the infinity diversity of living things with which we share the planet.

[Addendum, Jan 20, 2008: Colleague Art Caplan writes that Don't ask, don't tell is bad policy for cloned food. -- I might add I think it's bad policy for food in general. Also, Chris MacDonald at the Business Ethics Blog gives a different perspective. ]

Not a 'Good News' Day

This morning's news has two disturbing items:

First, from the Washington Post: Researchers have had to shut a South African AIDS vaccine trial developed by Merck & Co; they started warning hundreds of clinical trial volunteers that a highly touted experimental vaccine they received in recent months might make them more, not less, likely to contract HIV. The full article here.

Secondly, another reason to become a vegetarian -- from Wired, the inside scoop on how cloned meat (and milk) is filtering its way into the food chain and onto on your dinner table. The author talks to one of the farmers about the health problems that his cloned pig offspring have suffered: "Within weeks of delivery in September 2002, the first piglet got sick and died. Another dropped dead two months later. A few days before Christmas, Earnhart walked into his heated barn at feeding time and spotted his last two piglets belly-up in the straw. The cause of death was apparently their identical, adult- size ulcers...[The demise] may have resulted from a well-known, poorly understood side effect of somatic-cell nuclear transfer called sudden death syndrome." Access the rest of the article here.

Let's hope the rest of the week brings better news.