Brave new grill: Is cloned food destined for menu?
US - About 80 miles east of Austin, out where the fire ants bite and men still doff their baseball hats when greeting women, 20 cows pregnant with calves cloned by ViaGen Inc. have just arrived.Stampeding down a chute from a tractor-trailer, the cattle join a menagerie of cloned pigs and cows that include Elvis and Priscilla, calves cloned from cells scraped from sides of high-quality beef hanging in a slaughterhouse.
The cloning of barnyard animals has become so commonplace and mechanized that ViaGen says it's more than ready to efficiently produce juicier steaks and tastier chops through cloning.
It now looks like federal regulators will endorse the company's plan to bring cloned animal products to America's dinner tables.
No law prevents cloned food, but ViaGen has voluntarily withheld its products pending a ruling from the Food and Drug Administration.
Over the past three years it has worked to create elite bovine and porcine gene pools that can produce prodigious "milkers," top-quality beef cattle and biotech bacon. It has aggressively gobbled up competitors and locked up patents, including the one granted to the creators of Dolly the sheep.
All that really stands in ViaGen's way, besides a nod from the FDA, are squeamish consumers and skeptical food producers.
Source: News-Record
7 October 2005
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