With summer here, you can expect balmy weather, bathing suits and backyard barbeques.
However, you might be biting off more than you can chew the next time you grill out and sink your teeth into a cut of meat.
The Federal Department of Agriculture released a ""draft-risk assessment"" last December that said beef and milk from cloned cattle is safe to eat, which means your next hamburger could have come from a cloned animal.
""Cloned animals have been produced for a number of years already,"" said Dan Schaefer, professor and chair of the department of animal science at UW-Madison. ""The FDA took an interest in developing a safety policy.""
The technology being used to make cloned cattle—somatic cell nuclear transfer—is the same that scientists used in 1996 to create Dolly the Sheep, the first successfully cloned mammal. The process involves taking a cell from an adult animal and removing its nucleus, which is then put into a shell of an egg from that same species. The egg with the new nucleus is then transferred to a surrogate mother, and a calf is born that is genetically identical to the donor.
""[The process] could be thought of [as similar to the] production of twins when the twins aren't born on the same day,"" Schaefer said.
Schaefer added that only a few hundred cloned cattle have been created since the dawn of the technology.
""Although there's no legal basis for the food to not enter the food chain, the FDA has asked farmers to voluntarily not put those products in the market.""
Schaefer pointed out that a small percentage of cloned food is probably circulating in the market anyway.
After issuing the assessment, the FDA asked for a public review before they made a final decision on the fate of cloned food. Comments could be made by electronically or by mail until May 3.
After the FDA considers the comments, a decision will be made whether to require cloned meat and milk to be labeled as such. If the FDA decides to label cloned food, Schaefer said that it will never make it to the market because it is too much hassle for packinghouses to label individual cows.
""If there's no labeling, the meat will be in the food chain as it has been for the last decade,"" Schaefer said.
""It's not going to be an important food source,"" Schaefer said. ""The cloning process is very expensive. This technology won't be a large portion of our production.""
Cloning cattle can run for as much as $30,000 for the first clone.
""At those prices you won't get any return back,"" said Andy Peterson, a UW-Madison junior whose family owns a beef farm in Osceola, Wis. ""It would only be for breeding purposes.""
Peterson said that farmers can make up to $100,000 from selling semen from the best bull in its breed, so investing in a $30,000 clone would be worth the return.
""I don't see a long term use for cloning cattle though,"" Peterson said. ""A better bull will always come along.""
Even if cloning only applies to a select few cash cows, Schaefer pointed out that the meat will still reach the consumers.
""All cattle end up as beef at some point,"" Schaefer said.
Schaefer added that the fate of clones in the cattle market boils down to the FDA's decision after reviewing the public comments, but polls have shown that many people think cloned food is unsafe.
A poll released in 2005 by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology showed that 66 percent of American consumers are ""uncomfortable"" with animal cloning.
Another poll, conducted in 2005 by the Texas cloning company ViaGen Inc., showed that 29 percent of consumers would buy cloned food, 34 percent would consider buying cloned food after finding out more information and 35 percent of consumers would never buy cloned food.
""I think the public's uneasy because of the word ‘cloning,'"" Schaefer said, ""But there's no recognizable difference in the two kinds of meat.""
Schaefer said he would have no problem eating cloned beef.
Will the majority of the public ever feel the same way?
""No, I really don't see that ever happening,"" said Brendon Smith, the communications manager at Willy Street Co-op, which is located on the east side of Madison.
A dairy co-op located in western Wisconsin recently told a beef farmer that they would not sell his milk from a cloned cow because of consumer complaints. Smith said that very few co-op members would be interested in cloned products.
But Smith, Schaefer and Peterson all said that the future of cloned food really depends on buyer's demand for the products.
""We're owned by our members,"" Smith said. ""If the majority of our members wanted it, we would look at bringing it in.""
For more information about the animal cloning, you can visit www.fda.gov.
