Cloned or conventional, meat is unsafe

The Food and Drug
Administration recently declared that meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs and
goats and their offspring are "as safe to eat as food from conventionally
bred animals." That's like saying that brand A cigarettes are as safe to
smoke as brand B. The question isn't whether meat and milk from cloned animals
pose additional health risks - it's why would anyone want to consume meat and
milk at all?

Face it: Meat - cloned or not -
is about as "safe" as a troubled celebrity behind the wheel of a car.
It's high in cholesterol, saturated fat and concentrated protein - all of which
contribute to heart disease. Research shows that meat-eaters are 50 percent
more likely to develop heart disease than vegetarians are. A study published in
the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that 26 percent of
meat-eaters studied suffered from high blood pressure - the No. 1 risk factor
for strokes - compared to only 2 percent of vegetarians. The American Dietetic
Association acknowledges that people who eat animal products are more likely to
be overweight than people who do not.

In a 2007 joint report, the
American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund
advised people to lose weight and reduce their consumption of red and processed
meats to help prevent certain cancers, including colorectal and breast cancers.
Scientists with the University of Minnesota,
the Harvard School of Public Health and other institutions have cautioned that
eating red and processed meats can also cause diabetes. Other meats aren't any
better: According to a 2006 Harvard study, people who frequently eat grilled
skinless chicken have a 52 percent higher chance of developing bladder cancer
than people who don't.

Add to this the risk of illness
from consuming meat and milk tainted with dangerous bacteria. Just last week,
the Rochester Meat Co. in Minnesota
recalled 188,000 pounds of ground beef potentially contaminated with E. coli.
There've been at least eight other E. coli-related meat recalls since October.
In September, the Topps Meat Co. in New Jersey
recalled more than 21 million pounds of beef after 100 people became sick.
Since June, three elderly men have died and one woman has miscarried after
drinking listeria-contaminated milk from a Boston-area dairy plant.

Yet instead of at least
encouraging people to be wary when eating animal products, the FDA is allowing
meat and milk from the offspring of cloned animals to enter the food supply -
and consumers are supposed to swallow this? Only in America.
The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies says that it
doesn't see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones
and their offspring.

Nothing can justify this. Not
only are meat and milk unhealthy, the process of cloning animals is also
unethical. Cloned animals pose a risk to their surrogate mothers because they
tend to be too large for their mothers to deliver. Many clones have birth
defects, and cloned calves have died of respiratory, digestive, circulatory,
nervous, muscular and skeletal abnormalities. But, according to the FDA, if the
animals survive more than a few months, they appear normal in most ways. How
comforting: If they live long enough, they can be slaughtered in the same
terrifying ways that other animals are.

The FDA is moving in the wrong
direction. More and more consumers are resolving to make healthy, humane food
choices. They're choosing truly safe "meats" - mock meats - and other
vegetarian options. A 2005 Mintel survey indicated that U.S.
sales of vegetarian food increased by 64 percent from 2000 to 2005 and
predicted that the vegetarian food market will continue to grow in the next few
years. This represents progress - engineering animals and marketing unhealthy
food does not.