Editorial sobre clonación
Food from cloned animals
These products should remain in the lab
By David Schubert
January 3, 2007
These products should remain in the lab
By David Schubert
January 3, 2007
It is curious that the U.S. population seems willing to act as guinea pigs solely for the financial benefit of a few companies. This is most recently exemplified by the lack of outcry over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's move toward allowing the sale of milk and meat from cloned animals without any required labeling. The FDA decision is another example of the continuing sway that the U.S. agricultural biotechnology and chemical companies have over federal agencies.
The conclusion that cloned animal products are safe to eat is based almost completely on data and arguments provided by the companies that will profit from their sale. Similar scenarios allowed the introduction of genetically modified, or GM, foods 10 years ago, and the massive and largely unregulated introduction of pesticides after World War II.
The development of an agricultural system based on chemical pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides led to an increase in farm productivity and cheaper food. But it also blanketed our planet with chemicals now known to cause cancer, birth defects and huge environmental problems as well as bringing about economic disparities between populations who do and do not have the technology. More important, however, is the realization that had we given a little more thought and study to agricultural methods at the time, we would have come up with the more sustainable farming methods that are now being widely adapted.
Innovation and technological advancement are major driving forces for modern society, but they must be done in the context of both need and potential risk. Many European countries have outlawed toxic agricultural chemicals that are still widely used in the United States, and require much more stringent testing for adverse health and environmental effects before the introduction of new ones.
As with cloned farm animals, the introduction of GM food crops into our food supply was allowed by the FDA with essentially no regulatory oversight because it was claimed they were just like normal plants. GM crops were promoted as a way make food cheaper, reduce the need for agrochemicals and eliminate world hunger. Ten years after their introduction, there is no reduction in food cost, the worldwide use of chemicals on the farm has increased greatly, and world hunger is worse than ever. In addition, farmers have lost millions of dollars due to GM crop failures and closed export markets resulting from GM contamination because many countries do not allow GM foods.
The only benefactors of the GM technology have been the small group of companies that control over half of the world's seed supply and make 90 percent of the chemicals used in agriculture. Monsanto is the biggest player, controlling 41 percent of the global seed market for corn and 25 percent for soybeans. Its dominance was achieved through huge contributions to politicians, the intimidation of farmers, bribery and the perpetual harassment of individuals who oppose their views. If absolute control of our food supply is the goal, then the next step for agricultural biotechnology is to dominate the milk and meat markets through animal cloning.
As with the introduction of chemical agriculture and GM plants, animal cloning is a new and untested technology. Its famous first was Dolly the sheep. Cloning involves removing the genetic material from an egg, replacing it with that of the animal to be cloned, and then implanting the egg in the surrogate mother to which the clone is born. The advantage of animal cloning over breeding is that it eliminates the innate randomness of normal breeding and therefore is thought to assure that the desired characteristics are present in each clone. The trade-off, as with GM crops and pesticides, it that the health hazards to the consumer could be significant.
For example, to trick the surrogate mother into thinking that she is pregnant, she must be treated with high levels of hormones that will certainly enter our food supply along with her body parts. In addition, many clones are born with severely compromised immune systems. A good example is Dolly, which led a short, albeit glamorous, life due to multiple medical problems. It will therefore be necessary to treat cloned animals with antibiotics, which will further drive the selection for antibiotic resistant pathogens, already a major medical problem. Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences warned that cloned farm animals would likely increase the incidence of food-borne infections.
A logical extension of cloning is to make transgenic animals that contain genes from plants or other animals. This has in fact been done to solve a problem presented by the use of synthetic growth hormone to force cows to produce more milk. Since the super milk producer gets infections of her udder, the high-tech solution was to make a transgenic cow that produces its own antibiotics. Next up, cattle that make their own barbecue sauce.
Why is there such a drive to produce the type of laboratory-derived food represented by GM crops and cloned animals? Since the major, if not the only, benefactors of GM crop and animal cloning technologies are the companies that own them, it is clear the drive for their introduction is corporate profit. It is always assumed that the market drives the technology, but in the case of agricultural technology, supported by an enormous amount of money and political capital and the fact that the consumers do not seem to care, the reverse is clearly true.
And why are these products readily accepted in a country that has an overabundance of cheap food, while most of the world rejects this approach? The reason the U.S. population does not spend much time thinking about the origin of its food is because it believes the FDA is doing the necessary safety testing. In fact, there is no required safety testing for GM crops; there will be none for cloned animals.
The Europeans do not harbor this assumption because they have experienced dramatic failures of their regulatory agencies in the form of mad cow disease and HIV-infected blood supplies. An additional problem is that in the laboratory we only use guinea pigs in experiments where we can detect the outcome, while any adverse effects of biotech food on human health will be undetectable against the background of current medical problems. Therefore the claim that these foods are safe because there is no evidence of harm is invalid. It would seem to me that the toxic consequences of chemical farming and the failure of GM crop technology to produce any human benefit should force us to question the blind acceptance of yet another untested and unregulated agricultural practice.
The conclusion that cloned animal products are safe to eat is based almost completely on data and arguments provided by the companies that will profit from their sale. Similar scenarios allowed the introduction of genetically modified, or GM, foods 10 years ago, and the massive and largely unregulated introduction of pesticides after World War II.
The development of an agricultural system based on chemical pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides led to an increase in farm productivity and cheaper food. But it also blanketed our planet with chemicals now known to cause cancer, birth defects and huge environmental problems as well as bringing about economic disparities between populations who do and do not have the technology. More important, however, is the realization that had we given a little more thought and study to agricultural methods at the time, we would have come up with the more sustainable farming methods that are now being widely adapted.
Innovation and technological advancement are major driving forces for modern society, but they must be done in the context of both need and potential risk. Many European countries have outlawed toxic agricultural chemicals that are still widely used in the United States, and require much more stringent testing for adverse health and environmental effects before the introduction of new ones.
As with cloned farm animals, the introduction of GM food crops into our food supply was allowed by the FDA with essentially no regulatory oversight because it was claimed they were just like normal plants. GM crops were promoted as a way make food cheaper, reduce the need for agrochemicals and eliminate world hunger. Ten years after their introduction, there is no reduction in food cost, the worldwide use of chemicals on the farm has increased greatly, and world hunger is worse than ever. In addition, farmers have lost millions of dollars due to GM crop failures and closed export markets resulting from GM contamination because many countries do not allow GM foods.
The only benefactors of the GM technology have been the small group of companies that control over half of the world's seed supply and make 90 percent of the chemicals used in agriculture. Monsanto is the biggest player, controlling 41 percent of the global seed market for corn and 25 percent for soybeans. Its dominance was achieved through huge contributions to politicians, the intimidation of farmers, bribery and the perpetual harassment of individuals who oppose their views. If absolute control of our food supply is the goal, then the next step for agricultural biotechnology is to dominate the milk and meat markets through animal cloning.
As with the introduction of chemical agriculture and GM plants, animal cloning is a new and untested technology. Its famous first was Dolly the sheep. Cloning involves removing the genetic material from an egg, replacing it with that of the animal to be cloned, and then implanting the egg in the surrogate mother to which the clone is born. The advantage of animal cloning over breeding is that it eliminates the innate randomness of normal breeding and therefore is thought to assure that the desired characteristics are present in each clone. The trade-off, as with GM crops and pesticides, it that the health hazards to the consumer could be significant.
For example, to trick the surrogate mother into thinking that she is pregnant, she must be treated with high levels of hormones that will certainly enter our food supply along with her body parts. In addition, many clones are born with severely compromised immune systems. A good example is Dolly, which led a short, albeit glamorous, life due to multiple medical problems. It will therefore be necessary to treat cloned animals with antibiotics, which will further drive the selection for antibiotic resistant pathogens, already a major medical problem. Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences warned that cloned farm animals would likely increase the incidence of food-borne infections.
A logical extension of cloning is to make transgenic animals that contain genes from plants or other animals. This has in fact been done to solve a problem presented by the use of synthetic growth hormone to force cows to produce more milk. Since the super milk producer gets infections of her udder, the high-tech solution was to make a transgenic cow that produces its own antibiotics. Next up, cattle that make their own barbecue sauce.
Why is there such a drive to produce the type of laboratory-derived food represented by GM crops and cloned animals? Since the major, if not the only, benefactors of GM crop and animal cloning technologies are the companies that own them, it is clear the drive for their introduction is corporate profit. It is always assumed that the market drives the technology, but in the case of agricultural technology, supported by an enormous amount of money and political capital and the fact that the consumers do not seem to care, the reverse is clearly true.
And why are these products readily accepted in a country that has an overabundance of cheap food, while most of the world rejects this approach? The reason the U.S. population does not spend much time thinking about the origin of its food is because it believes the FDA is doing the necessary safety testing. In fact, there is no required safety testing for GM crops; there will be none for cloned animals.
The Europeans do not harbor this assumption because they have experienced dramatic failures of their regulatory agencies in the form of mad cow disease and HIV-infected blood supplies. An additional problem is that in the laboratory we only use guinea pigs in experiments where we can detect the outcome, while any adverse effects of biotech food on human health will be undetectable against the background of current medical problems. Therefore the claim that these foods are safe because there is no evidence of harm is invalid. It would seem to me that the toxic consequences of chemical farming and the failure of GM crop technology to produce any human benefit should force us to question the blind acceptance of yet another untested and unregulated agricultural practice.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070103/news_lz1e3schubert.html
Schubert is a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Etiquetas: Clones
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