Ben & Jerry’s campaign to ensure produce from clones is detectable in the food chain shows that bundling biotech in with conventional produce remains unacceptable – but lessons from GM do not seem to have been learned.
Ben & Jerry’s has fessed up to creating an online presence for a fictitious company selling cloned milk as a publicity stunt, as campaigners believe that the offspring of cloned animals have already entered the food chain.
By all accounts the US meat sector faces a mixed outlook, with
prices falling for domestic supplies of beef, the encroachment of
cheaper imports, a new case of mad cow disease in Canada and
worries about avian influenza.
Dairy producers' losses from Hurricane Katrina could easily exceed
$40m, says a US dairy association, highlighting the prospect of
immeasurable long-term damage and raising questions over when
disaster aid will get through.
A team of US and Japanese researchers have declared that milk and
meat from cloned cattle are likely to be safe for human
consumption, although stressed that research in this area was still
very much in its infancy, Tom Armitage reports.
The beef industry's ability to accurately breed cattle for specific
traits such as increased meat or milk yield has been significantly
improved with the release of the first draft of the bovine genome
sequence.
US meat packing firm Packerland is conducting a voluntary recall of
59,000 pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli
0157:H7 bacteria.
Food safety concerns rise in the UK as the Food Standards Agency
launches an investigation into the apparent failure by the meat
hygiene arm of the food watchdog to test some casualty cattle aged
between 24 and 30 months for BSE before...
Improving the quality and texture of beef for consumer tastebuds
could lift sales for a US beef industry knocked lately by the BSE
scare. In a recent link up, US agri-giant Cargill and life science
firm MetaMorphix have completed...
The ongoing BSE crisis in the US has forced the government to take
drastic measures to contain the disease. Agriculture secretary Ann
Veneman announced last week that additional safeguards to bolster
US protection systems and further...