They slipped another one by us... http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/business/12837825.htm
Despite consumer jitters, cloned food coming soon PAUL ELIAS Associated Press ROUND TOP, Texas - 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. All that really stands in ViaGen's way, besides a nod from the FDA, are squeamish consumers and skeptical food producers. The FDA is widely expected to soon endorse the findings of a 2002 National Academy of Science report it commissioned that found food products derived from cloned animals do not "present a food safety concern." A March survey by the International Food Information Council, an industry trade group, reported that 63 percent of consumers would likely not buy food from cloned animals, even if the FDA determined the products were safe. It's one thing for traditional crops like corn to be engineered to be pest-resistant, and people already eat genetically engineered soy beans in all manner of processed food. But biotech companies run into what bioethicists call the "yuck factor" when they begin tinkering with animals. That's why ViaGen likens its work to now common reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination. There are no guarantees that the cloned calf Elvis will yield the top highest quality beef - the USDA's "prime yield 1" designation - that gave him his life, but it certainly increases the odds he will produce prime meat. As it stands, "prime yield 1" ratings come along once every 12,000 cows. ViaGen's founder Scott Davis says knowing which cow is likely to yield premium beef could demand a $250 premium per heifer, a big markup in the notoriously low-margin industry. He said the price of a cloned cow continues to drop and, depending on the order volume, can cost as little as $8,000 per animal. "Cloning is at a commercially viable place now," Davis said. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
