I cringed when I read recently that the Food and Drug Administration had declared that food from cloned animals is safe to eat.
Could this mean I would have to struggle with yet another decision about what to put on my dinner table? Already I wrestle with whether my seafood is sustainable, my coffee is shade-grown and my beer is organic.
But the more I looked into this matter, the more I realized that I was not going to have to take any quick stance about whether to serve cloned burgers for supper. I have got plenty of time, years, before cloned burger meat appears in the groceries. And it might not show up at all.
Yes, the FDA decision earlier this month has eased the way for meat and milk from genetic copies of cows, steers and hogs to eventually be sold in stores. But nobody is in a rush. Right after the FDA said cloned meat was safe, the Department of Agriculture asked producers to keep cloned animals off the market for a while.
The clones themselves are unlikely to be sent to market. Those animals cost too much to produce. Their offspring are the ones who will probably be sent to packinghouses. Because breeding takes time, it will probably be at least three to five years before products from these offspring appear in groceries.
This timetable is premised on the notion that we milk drinkers and meat eaters will accept products from cloned animals. That seems to be an open question. The results of opinion polls on cloning, like those in this year's presidential primaries, indicate public opinion is all over the lot.
A survey conducted for the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 66 percent of respondents were "uncomfortable" with animal cloning. A poll commissioned by the University of Maryland's Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture asked respondents what they would do if the FDA declared cloned meat and milk safe. About a third said they would buy the products, another third said they would think about it and the remaining third said they would never buy it.
Finally, a poll by the American Anti-Vivisection Society, an animal welfare group, found two-thirds of respondents disapproved of cloning animals for food.
The Europeans seem to be as divided on this matter as we are. No sooner did a European commission on food safety recently announce that consuming products from cloned animals was safe, than another European commission on ethics in science warned that cloning causes suffering among the animals.
