Ben & Jerry’s cloned food crusade: “It doesn’t feel right” doesn’t trump science

Having cloned animals in the food supply is bad because it seems really yucky and people don’t like it. That, in a nutshell, is what Ben & Jerry’s recently spent a bunch of money on in creating a hoax Web site featuring a fictional company called “CyClone Dairy,” that made all it’s dairy products from cloned cows.

When Ben & Jerry’s unveiled the reasoning for this April Fool’s Day-inspired PR campaign, this is the reasoning they gave:

In January 2008, the U.S Food and Drug Administration declared milk and meat from cloned animals safe for human consumption, enabling cloned food products to enter the U.S. food supply. However, many Americans are not aware of this fact and are uncomfortable with the idea of eating cloned food products. In fact, a 2008 national poll conducted by the Food Marketing Institute revealed that more than three-quarters of Americans are not comfortable with eating foods from cloned animals.

This is the closest thing to a fact that Ben & Jerry’s produced on the matter. Because it is true that the FDA declared that meat and milk from cloned animals safe for human consumption. Which, apparently Ben, Jerry, and some people who were bushwhacked on a Manhattan street find yucky.

Some quick research on the subject, however, shows that at no time have any scientific studies been done to see what type of dangers “yucky” things present humans. But unfortunately for Ben & Jerry’s, studies have been done on the safety of using cloned animals for food. Thus far, the FDA, New Zealand, Japan and others have come to the conclusion that consuming food from cloned animals is safe.

“Their conclusion is that based on the scientific knowledge and information available at present, such food is as safe as cattle and hogs bred conventionally,” said Kazuo Funasaka in January.

On the opposite side of the coin are gut- and agenda-based opinions from such organizations as “Friends of the Earth.”

“The FDA study did not look at the long-term health effects of consuming cloned animal products. Eating genetically abnormal clones may cause human health abnormalities, leading to cancer and other late-onset degenerative diseases.”

While distrust of the government is normal, the International Food Information Council has made it clear that food from cloned animals is safe, and that the FDA did their homework on the subject:

FDA requires that all foods sold to consumers are safe. FDA analyzed more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific studies on animal cloning which include years of safety data involving multiple generations of livestock, before drafting their risk assessment statement, which determined these food products as safe to eat. They also took into account public comments that were received on the draft assessment. In addition, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published reviews in 2002 and 2004 and determined that there was no evidence of safety concerns for foods derived from cloned animals.

Nonetheless, for many, the “yuck” factor destroys peer-reviewed scientific research. Still, Ben & Jerry’s campaign is not to eliminate the possibility of having cloned animals in the food supply, it is to label the cloned food as such:

We believe you should have the right to choose which foods you eat – and not to eat cloned foods if you don’t want to. And that’s why Ben & Jerry’s believes we need a national clone tracking system, so people and companies can know where their food is coming from.

But with their vague CyClone Dairy campaign, that message has been quickly lost, and others have taken the debate in directions they want.

“While CyClone Dairy is a fictional creation, the potential for a company like this to emerge is dangerously real. The only thing that stands in the way of the livestock industry putting meat and milk from cloned animals or their offspring into the food supply is a voluntary moratorium. In other words, a supplier could easily go against the moratorium and put these products out into the marketplace – and FDA would not even require it to be labeled,” wrote Food & Water Watch, bypassing research for the much more convenient fear factor.

And from the blog Eat. Drink. Better.:

Ben & Jerry’s launched this fictitious dairy company last month to bring attention to the frightening reality of meat and dairy from cloned animals entering the nations food supply.

Basically, the point these posts make is this: Oh my God, you could be eating cloned foods right now! But, as FWW points out, there is currently a voluntary moratorium on putting food from cloned animals in the food supply. And with the exorbitant cost of cloning animals, that’s unlikely to change. From the FDA’s “Cloning Myths” section:

FDA has asked clone producers and breeders to voluntarily keep milk and meat from clones out of the food and feed supplies until we finish assessing their safety. To the best of our knowledge, they have been voluntarily keeping the milk and meat from clones out of the food and feed supplies. Further, clones are for breeding stock, so it’s not in a breeder’s best interest to put young stock into the food supply for sale as meat.

It should be pointed out, however, that in Sept. 2008, the Wall Street Journal ran an article pointing out that there is a tiny percentage of food from cloned animal offspring in the food supply:

Don Coover, a veterinarian, rancher and owner of SEK Genetics in Galesburg, Kan., estimated that “hundreds, maybe thousands, of offspring of clones” of beef cattle already exist in the U.S. — though that is a fraction of the nation’s 97 million head of cattle. He said he has sold about 30 offspring of clones to be slaughtered for food.

Animal cloning, which received world-wide attention with the replication of Dolly the sheep in Scotland in 1996, is done by injecting genetic material from the animal to be cloned into a donor egg from another animal. The resulting embryo is then implanted into a surrogate mother, which carries it until birth. Cloned animals can breed with other animals to produce offspring.

The technology allows farmers to replicate animals with desirable traits, such as immunity to certain diseases or the ability to produce more milk. But not many have used it because of the expense — about $20,000 a clone — and U.S. regulators’ call for the food industry to voluntarily refrain from selling products from cloned animals.

Interestingly, the very same WSJ article contains a quote from a consumer, which basically summarizes the entire anti-cloning movement:

“As a mom of two young children, it makes me very uneasy, very nervous that these things are in the food supply,” said Alexis Joyce, a 35-year-old homemaker in Arlington, Va., who shops mostly at farmers’ markets. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

In the end, it comes to this: The United States has emerged from eight years of Republican governance that not only ignored science, but actively fought it. With a pro-science administration in place, now is the time for real facts to dominate debate. And at this stage, the scientific evidence is all on the side of cloning. The onus is now on anti-cloners to prove why having unlabeled food from cloned animals in the food supply is either unethical or unhealthy.

And “it just doesn’t feel right” is just not an acceptable response.

–WKW

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