Resurrecting Dead Cattle for Cloning

Wasn't it just last week we were talking about cloning, well, here we go again.
Cloned cattle is being used in beef production in the US, and is created from the cells of dead animals, according to a US cloning company.
Farmers explain it's being done because it is the only way to know if an animal's meat is of exceptionally high quality.
So, by inspecting its carcass and assessing which animals have exceptional qualities, these exceptional animals are cloned to be used as breeding stock.

The concept of livestock cloning is to clone the most exceptional animals to produce the most exceptional beef.
That is why there are cloned bulls here that have been produced from the cells taken from the carcasses of dead animals that have special characteristics.

Brady Hicks of the JR Simplot company in Idaho said:
"The animals are hanging on a rail ready to go to the meat counter."
"We identify carcasses that have certain carcass characteristics that we want, but it's too late to reproduce the genetics of the animal. But through cloning we can resurrect that animal."

But this isn't for everyone, Whole Foods Market for example, has banned the sale of resurrected cattle.
According to its global vice-president, Margaret Wittenberg, although meat and milk from cloned animals has been allowed to go on sale in the US, most Americans have never heard of it.
"A lot of customers in the United States are oblivious of it," she said.
"You don't hear about it in the media. And when you do tell people about it they look at you and say 'you're kidding! They're not doing that are they? Why would they?'"

Cloning is not supposed to be practiced by livestock farmers in Europe, and there are moves by some members of the European Parliament to ban it totally.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided that meat and milk from cloned animals are safe to eat. That opened the door for products from the offspring of cloned animals to enter the food chain.

Currently, there are no laws to prevent meat and milk from these animals going into the food chain. And there is no legal requirement to label food from cloned offspring.

A survey of 25,000 consumers across the EU makes clear families are unhappy at what they call 'Frankenstein Food' farming.

UK to investigate claim that milk from cloned cow sold to public

British food safety officials are looking into a claim that milk from the offspring of a cloned cow was on sale for public consumption.

This has generated much concern among the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and many farmers.

But Britain's dairy industry keeps insisting that there is absolutely no danger. (they always say that)

A British dairyman, speaking anonymously, said that he was using milk from a cow bred from a clone as part of his daily production.

The farmer did not want his name to be disclosed because he feared Britons saw cloning as "distasteful" so buyers would stop taking his milk if they knew who he was.

(what does he think the public will do now?)

The FSA said, "The agency has not received any applications relating to cloning and no authorizations have been made."

They go on to say,"The agency will, of course, investigate any reports of unauthorized novel foods entering the food chain."

Peter Stevenson, from campaigners Compassion in World Farming, said he was "extremely concerned" at the report and called for an outright ban on the sale of food from cloned animals and their offspring.

But Dairy UK, which represents the industry in Britain, keeps insisting there was no danger.

"Milk and meat from the offspring of clones does not present any food safety risk," it said in a statement.

Here's an interesting commercial from CyClone Dairy: