Producers use cloning when it is the most economical way to make genetic progress.

Heteroplasmy? It occurs naturally, to, every time a sperm penetrates an egg. It is no more dangerous than heterozygosity, which is the presence of both parents chromosomes in every cell of every animal’s body (naturally).

And there have been studies on the offspring of clones, even though there is absolutely no reason to expect them to be different–and guess what, they weren’t!

visit clonesafety.org for the science

You write that “it’s a fact” that food from the offspring of cloned animals hasn’t been sufficiently studied to be deemed safe. But that’s an opinion, and it’s not shared by the independent scientific experts who studied the food or wrote the extensive Risk Assessment for the U.S. FDA.

Also you wrote that the offspring of cloned animals are “next generation clones.” That’s definitely wrong! “Offspring” refers to traditionally-bred animals — they’re not clones at all. Maybe this is why you believed that there could be a problem with their meat and milk? The reason food producers are interested in cloning is so they can use it to produce breeding animals, then use the traditionally-bred (i.e. non-cloned) offspring for food production.

You also have some errors about Large Offspring Syndrome — it’s a real occurrence, but it’s not cloning-specific (it occurs sometimes with in vitro fertilization), and it doesn’t happen anywhere near 50% of the time. For example it doesn’t occur in pig or goat cloning. It occurs in a minority of cloned cattle.

As for pressuring legislators to mandate the labeling of food from cloned animals, that’s going nowhere because it’s ALREADY legal to label food that comes from cloned animals OR food that does NOT come from cloned animals. It’s the same with kosher, halal, and organic food — food marketers are free to use them voluntarily in response to demand. Demand for clone-free labels will result in clone-free labels.

Thanks for covering this topic but please keep in mind that advocacy groups for the organic food industry are not reliable sources of info about it (I notice the plug for organic food in your last paragraph).