Sorry, another article which is off-topic but I just found it so grim and freaky that I thought I'd inflict it on you too..... I could go on such a long rant about points raised in it but it's probably bad for my blood-pressure and goes without saying anyhow!
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23061280-5005961,00.html
Cloned animals miserable, but safe to eat
By Maggie Fox in Washington
January 16, 2008 02:11pm
CLONED animals may often be born deformed and die young but scientists,
who have looked at every aspect of their biology to try to explain why,
can find no evidence that it would be dangerous to eat them.
None of the more than 700 studies reviewed in detail showed any evidence
to suggest that milk or organ or muscle tissue from cloned animals could
harm someone who ate it, the US Food and Drug Administration said in its
final report on the subject today.
"We have actually done a more in-depth analysis of the meat from cloned
animals than has been done ever," said Mark Walton, president of
Texas-based farm animal cloning firm ViaGen.
In 2002, a National Academy of Sciences panel said there was no reason to
believe that meat or milk from cloned animals may be unsafe. But it said
the FDA should do a review, and because of the outpouring of opinions and
fears about the subject, the agency extended its review for more than a
year.
Cloned calves had died from respiratory, digestive, circulatory, nervous,
muscular and skeletal abnormalities, as well as because they had abnormal
placentas, the FDA said.
And researchers have looked at all the possible causes of these
abnormalities - changes in the genes, in other parts of DNA that affect
what genes do and the process of cloning itself.
They have looked at whether the surviving animals have unusual levels of
hormones such as the stress hormone cortisol or growth hormones. They have
looked at whether their milk contains altered levels of fat or fatty
acids, and they have fed animal products from clones to mice and other
animals to see if there are any health effects.
Animals are cloned using somatic cell nuclear transfer - a process in
which an egg cell is hollowed out and the nucleus from an ordinary cell
from the animal to be copied is put inside.
An electric or chemical charge is used to start the egg growing and
dividing as if it had been fertilised by a sperm.
This process itself can cause changes in the development of the embryo,
fetus and young animal. Not all the same genes are turned on as are active
during normal sexual reproduction, studies have found.
But if the animal survives more than a few months, it appears normal in
most ways, the studies indicate.
"As part of the process of evaluating meat and milk from cloned animals,
we and USDA (the US Department of Agriculture) looked at a group of cloned
animals and we looked at more components of muscle tissue and of meat than
normally is looked at," Mr Walton said.
"This is one of the most rigorous food safety reviews ever conducted,"
said Jerome Baker, chief executive of the Federation of Animal Science
Societies.
As the FDA ruled today that food from cloned animals was safe, the
Agriculture Department asked the cloning industry to extend a voluntary
ban on marketing food from the animals ban during a transition period.
Even so, it was unlikely people would eat food directly from a cloned
animal - they were more likely to be used as breeding stock, with cloning
used to reproduce animals with desired characteristics, animal cloners
said.
And any sexually produced offspring would be even more normal than their
parents, the FDA and the scientists agreed.
Margaret Mellon, director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union
of Concerned Scientists and a critic of the approval, agreed that the food
itself was unlikely to be dangerous.
"It seems to me that the food safety risks are very remote," Ms Mellon
said.
"The question is how sure you have to be about the safety of the
technology when you are moving it into society against a tidal wave of
consumer as well as trade concern."