The Food Professor says there is no risk with cloned meat, but the product is something different from a consumer point of view. Sylvain Charlebois Professor and Director at Dalhousie’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab explains that cloned meat is the offspring of cloned animals that would be allowed to be commercialized.
He says, “When you assess the quality and the nature of that kind of meat from a cloned animal, I’d say that you just can’t tell the difference, it would be the exact same. The challenge of course is when you think about food, you’re planning to feed humans, and some humans may not find the concept of cloning all that appetizing.”
Charlebois says cloned animals will reduce costs for the industry and increase industry’s ability to achieve its goals in offering high quality products but suggests those reduced costs won’t be passed on in the grocery store. He says they saw it with genetic engineering and genetically modified salmon.
“Every time technologies allow the industry to become more efficient, more profitable, without labelling it is impossible to actually convey those benefits to the consumer in the end. For example, if I offer you two steaks, one is cloned meat, the other one is conventional both at the same price, my guess is that most Canadians would actually pick the conventional options. But if the cloned meat is half price and its labelled my guess is that more people would consider buying cloned meat.” He says that’s exactly why they’re not labelling.
Charlebois says there is an animal welfare component because cloning is a lot of trial and error which also supports labelling the product. He says they outed Health Canada over not planning any public notification about lifting restrictions on foods derived from cloned cattle and swine.
