I'm not a particularly big fan of the FDA. Most of the progress in food and drug safety has been more voluntary and economically driven than FDA mandated (e.g., sanitation and bacterial contamination testing exceed FDA requirements in many slaughterhouses because McDonalds will not buy beef from them otherwise.

Their ruling on "organic" labeling panders to an agrindustry trying to convert environmental "green" into financial "green" with little attention paid to the original function and purpose of organic farming.

The rules for "substantially similar" drug approval seems designed to help pharmaceutical manufacturers end-run patent law while avoiding the costly bother of ensuring their drugs are safe or effective.

They're basically a system in place to allow businesses to shit on the little guy with the big brother seal of approval. I'm sure they do a lot of less controversial stuff that's really beneficial to public health and welfare, of course, but we're a long way from street corner hucksters selling snake oil and laudanum.How do you feel about eating cloned plants?

You know that the FDA is a big part of why quack medicines aren't in the mainstream anymore, right? Sure, we get stuff like homeopathy, but at least it's just useless, not actively harmful.

Brose this Google book preview http://books.google.com/books?id=J5x...okg3qX5ljz5K98
if you have any interest in the topic, one of my professors used it as a textbook a few years ago, and it was quite fascinating. I wasn't aware of the history of the FDA or just how bad things used to be until I read it.

Oh wow the FDA approved it. That seem to approve anything. There are several known harmful agents out there that they have approved, anyone ever heard of Aspartame? There are probably hundreds of products out there that use the stuff and it is a known poison.

I am glad we get all my beef and chickens from organic farmers that we personally know.

I've heard of it, and I'm fortunate enough to not consume 20% of my body weight in aspartame daily, and not even 2% like some studies have claimed causes malignancy. The most recent report, in the Annals of Oncology, found no correlation between aspartame and cancer in humans (unlike the study of aspartame in rodents that started the panic) http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi...urcetype=HWCIT

Aspartame panic is not substantiated by the facts.

You say 'genetically modified' but that's 100% incorrect. By definition, clones are ... genetically unmodified. So, if there's nothing new whatsoever introduced during cloning, what's the problem? And, if nothing is changed, it's not an experiment. Cloning is nothing more than copying. This has been done historically in the plant kingdom. Haven't you ever broken a branch off of your prize tomato plant and stuck it in the ground to make a new plant? That is cloning. It's really a whole lot simpler than the uninformed masses are led to believe.

Sorry, this would have been more accurately written as "genetically engineered." (i.e. cloning through genetically engineered processes as opposed to selective breeding.) Cloning is in many cases a high-tech form of selective breeding, but it can be much more than that depending on your goals.

The experiment is in bringing a number of lifeforms of invariable genetic traits into being. Sustainable ecosystems are dependent on variability--that is, biodiversity. It is an experiment because we still know far too little about the biology of mammals to be doing this sort of thing. Selective breeding is far safer than cloning for that reason. If you were to mismanage a cloning operation, you could essentially throw a beneficial genetic course off its path. The results could be devastating, for both mammals and plants alike. It is far too early to allow this technology to be used in the marketplace. The least that should be required is heavy regulation on both ends. Let consumers decide if they want to support this practice.

This is only a concern if the clones replace the other individuals of the species. As long as genetic diversity is preserved in a population somewhere, (either other domestic populations, or wild populations from which the domestic strain evolved) that diversity can be tapped to maintain the health of a cloned population. Even if the cloned population can't be saved, it's only a concern if the clones constitute the whole of the species. It doesn't seem likely that cloning will become universally practised for any domesticated species in the forseeable future. Also, it's not only cloning that results in the loss of genetic diversity; selective breeding has been doing this for hundreds of years. Diversity loss is not a cloning issue, it's a husbandry issue, and cloning is simply another tool with the potential to be used to our benefit or our detriment.
The same is true of mismanaging a breeding operation.

Just a note here too.

At this point the only clones would be the prime breeding animals, it would be far to expensive to 'eat' a cloned one.

This would be like having unlimited Secretariat's for breeding purposes, though I can see a nasty implication for horse races :)

To be specific, the FDA found no grounds upon which to claim any difference between cloned vs. non-cloned products and thus had no basis for regulatory oversight. They did request that the products of cloned animals be kept off market voluntarily. So far they have been.You're probably thinking of saccharin and it's "Known in the state of california to cause cancer in laboratory animals" statement. It causes an increased risk of bladder cancer in the male offspring of female rats exposed to chemical while pregnant in levels that would not be achievable by any rational means other than IV.

The publicized issue with aspartame was more than there were a lot of stockholders on the approval board. It also decomposes to produce methanol, though not in quantities large enough to be harmful (in humans) unless, again, you're eating it by the shovel full.Sure. FDA certified "organic" is pretty much meaningless.

Yes and no. It is too expensive to eat cloned animals. However in the not-to-distant future it won't be . At that point I expect we will be served 1st generation burgers. :-)

Did that effort to allow an "organic" label on anything carbon-based ever make progress?