The following letter was sent to The Independent letters section in response to Skippy For Supper, published 24 January 2008. The bits in bold are the bits the editor cared to publish on 28 January.

Re: Skippy For Supper; 24/01/08

Sir,

Many people, when they think of cutting greenhouse gases, think primary of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Slowly the information is seeping through that that methane is more damaging than carbon dioxide and that its greatest source is our society’s reliance upon lamb and beef. The serious greenie should therefore think about reducing their consumption of these animals in favour of other alternatives, as well as using the car less.

To that end, “Skippy for Supper” is welcome as it highlights a meat which can help to reduce greenhouse gases. However, it failed to address one important question: is shipping frozen skippy half way around the World better for the environment than eating a flatulent cow from next door? Personally I don’t know but I’m disappointed that the article didn’t mention it.

I also have to wonder whether any thought has been given to the expected rise in skippy-meat once peak oil starts to bite. It’s all very well to highlight it (and ostrich, springbok and bison) as meats more atmosphere-friendly than beef and lamb, but it doesn’t do the environmental movement any favours if importing these from across the globe is basically unsustainable.

Given these flaws, I think the article would have been better as a green-angled foodie article rather than a foodie-angled green one.

Yours etc

Site Tags: meat, sustainability, independent, letter

According to the Washington Post, the US Food & Drug Agency (FDA) is set to say that it is safe to eat cloned animals. Commentators have said that is probably means the parents will be cloned and their children sent to slaughter. When the parents start to get old and rickity then they will be recloned.

The paper also reports the FDA as saying that while it looked at moral and ethical concerns it decided to go with science alone.

Much of biological science is now based upon Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution”. Simply put, and allowing for all the research which has taken place in the ensuing hundred years or so, this describes how all life’s DNA changes in order to accommodate its environment. Generally such changes are thought to happen over hundreds or thousands of years, but there is concrete evidence to show that they happen much faster (for instance, Darwin’s finches show how man harms evolution and Scientists watch Darwin’s finches evolve).

What worries me most about the idea of using cloned animals in this way is the fact that its based upon the idea that when you take a copy of some DNA it is an immutable snapshot. It is not. The animal produced is a very close copy to the original, but is not exactly the same.

This leak from the FDA is in fact the latest milestone on the long road in the US to approve cloned animals for human consumption. The process was kicked off in 2002 as one of the first acts of the current Bush administration, which leads to the inevitable suspicion the there may an invisible corporate hand somewhere in the story. Back in 2002 it was admitted that there simply wasn’t a good enough data sample to reach a definite conclusion. This cannot have changed in under six years.

There is a welter of reasons why we should be cautiously sceptical about cloning at the very least: animal welfare, “playing God” and the Law of Unintended Consequences to name but a few. However, to maintaining a purely scientific line like the FDA, is there enough science to say it is safe to eat cloned meat?

I would have to say “No”. Simply because a) clones are not duplicates, they are close copies, and b) evolution can cause DNA to change within a couple of years. Put these two facts together and you realise that this is definitely a case where trials involving the cloning of animals and then the examination of their offspring several generations later need to be undertaken before any serious conclusion can be arrived at.

Site Tags: FDA, animal, cloning, safe to eat

Sent to Paul Goodman (my MP — lucky chap) and DEFRA