Don't touch my burger

You certainly heard about the recent Food and Drug Administration's decision to authorize selling meat from cloned animals.

I enjoy a good burger from time to time but am not too sure I would like to eat meat from cloned animals. In fact I hate the idea.

Rachel, a lovely English girl I met on New Year’s Eve forwarded me an email last week sent to her by Kate McMahon from Friends of the Earth.

Kate posted an announcement about this issue and proposed to collect petition signatures from the public which will be forwarded to the Congress and FDA.

I hereby reproduce the text of her announcement in full, with the link to sign this petition in case you’re interested.

”Today, (wed jan 16^th) the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted a ban on selling meat and dairy products coming from cloned animals.

The FDA has buckled to big biotech and agro-business despite more than 150,000 public comments opposing the lifting of the ban, and amendments to the federal Farm Bill and Omnibus Appropriations Bill calling for more research before lifting the ban.

Genetically speaking, you meat eaters could eat burgers from the same cow for years.

Don't eat meat? We still think this issue will interest you, given the risks we take by introducing cloned animals into our food system and ecosystem.

It is too late to stop the FDA from permitting the sale of food from cloned animals, and there are no labelling requirements either, which is why we need to make grocery stores pay a price for choosing to sell it.

Starting today, Friends of the Earth is collecting petition signatures from the public that we will deliver to all the major grocery stores -- and provide copies to Congress and the FDA. The text of the petition:

I urge you to declare that your grocery stores will not sell food from cloned animals. I plan to shop only at stores that can make such a guarantee.

Sign the petition now. (http://www.FoE.org/No_Food_From_Cloned_Animals)

The FDA claims that cloned animals and their offspring are safe for us to eat, yet studies used by the FDA are incomplete.

Cloned animals have a much higher rate of genetic abnormalities than animals that reproduce naturally. Most cloned animals die immediately after birth because the intricacies of the cloning process are still not well understood. Dolly, the first cloned sheep, died only six years after her birth of premature arthritis and lung disease.|

Tell grocers that you aren't buying it! “

photos taken from the site fotosearch.fr (free of rights)