Word: fda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last month the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the sale of cloned meat in the U.S., having determined that products from cloned cattle, pigs and goats are as safe to eat as meat from their naturally reproduced brethren. That makes advocates happy: Cloning enables the livestock industry to do in a fraction of the time what breeders have been doing throughout history, narrowing the gene pool to its most desirable genes. Beyond that, say cloners, future benefits include production of genetically engineered animals that could offer a variety of benefits - more nutrient-rich milk, for example, for people without...
Safe as it may be, there's another problem about cloned meat that the FDA approval hasn't taken into account: the unscientific "ick" factor. Though cattle are often reproduced artificially - using in vitro fertilization, for example - and though cloning is just another form of reproduction as far as scientists are concerned, the public is somewhat less phlegmatic about the technology. "You can't lobotomize people's brains to keep their morality from affecting their clinical understanding," said Sheila Jasanoff, a Harvard professor of science and technology studies, at a presentation about cloned meat at last weekend's American Association...
Cloned-animal products aren't on store shelves yet - the industry won't begin selling them for at least a few months, after a government-recommended "transition period" - but when they finally do appear in supermarkets you may not even notice, because they won't be labeled. "The FDA does not require labeling if there [are] no food safety issues," said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, at a January press conference...
Until now, the genetic traceability of meat hasn't been much of a public health issue in the U.S. But with the USDA recall and the FDA's Jan. 15 approval of cloned-animal food products, Cunningham thinks Americans will want to know where the food in their grocery store is coming from. A 2007 poll by the Consumers Union found, in fact, that 89% of consumers would prefer that cloned foods be distinguished with labels. "This idea that all our food can be anonymous, trucked from anywhere in the world with its origins lost along...
...Harvard-Yale Blood Challenge collected donations last week, some Harvard students and potential donors weren’t allowed to do their part in crushing our rival. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires blood drives to turn away perspective donors who respond affirmatively to questions asking if they are male and have “had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977,” or are female and have had sexual contact with a male of that description. The American Red Cross has no choice but to enforce FDA restrictions. This restriction, however...