I can has cloneburger?

The recent FDA approval of cloned meat has been in the news lately. I reached for the bag of rock salt I keep handy for anything that originates from a government and claims to possess scientific rigor and took a look at their risk assessment.

In principle, there’s nothing wrong with cloned meat— a true clone would be identical to its original and pose identical risks. The problem is that cloning is error-prone, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about cellular biology. Even if they’re getting all the chromosomes duplicated properly, what about DNA methylation and microRNA? The FDA release has a Risk Assessment section that does discuss the risks of epigenetic changes, which mentions methylation but not microRNA; their conclusion is that “Progeny of animal clones, on the other hand, are not anticipated to pose food safety concerns, as natural mating resulting from the production of new gametes by the clones is expected to reset even those residual epigenetic reprogramming errors that could persist in healthy, reproducing clones. Thus any anomalies present in clones are not expected to be transmitted to their progeny.”

So what I see here is a lot of informed expectation and a few animal trials that have promising initial results. Since we’re still learning about these subtleties of genetics, I’d rather hold off on cloned meat for a few years while it gets further scrutiny. Once we have the science down, I will be delighted to enjoy tasty, tasty filet mignon that was created on a tissue printer from cell lines cloned from a cow you can feed in a petting zoo, along with fresh sourdough made from grain grown in a vertical farm. I’d rather have cloned meat labeled as such; as The Economist suggests, if it’s that good, being cloned should be a badge of quality.