FDA and safety of eating cloned meat

Re “Food derived from clones is safe, FDA says,” Dec. 29

Today’s whirl of excess and acceleration is beginning to scare me. Deciding the safety of such 21st century issues as cloned meat, let alone its secure labeling, is no match for yesterday’s governmental power paradigms. The under-trained, over-pressured heads of the Food and Drug Administration should be required to eat roast rack of clone and brisket mini-me for a year before each weighty decree.

JUDY DAVID

Brentwood

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What brave new world has opened up before us? Have we uncovered the key to producing a uniform, identical army of food ready to march to the guillotine for the ravenous appetites of our growing children?

Perhaps every farm pig will soon reach the weight of 800 pounds, bones crippled under its own weight. Maybe someday we will be able to mass produce cows that lactate like Arrowhead coolers. Perhaps we will learn to make chickens without beaks, cattle without horns. It will save them the pain of debeaking and dehorning after all. Can we make them without feathers? How about toes? It will be for their own good, you understand. How I look forward to the day when our fearless American scientists learn to make animals that do not cry when they are killed. What a world it would be.

POLLY WALTER

Los Angeles

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I don’t have any moral, ethical or religious objections to cloning animals -- but I don’t want to eat them. Yes, I know, the FDA claims it’s safe. But anyone even vaguely familiar with the great food pyramid debate (in which fear of the sugar industry caused certain recommendations to be dumbed down, despite ever-rising obesity rates) or the fight for the morning-after pill (in which fear of right-wing reprisals initially trumped expert recommendations) -- knows there’s a political component to our government’s health-policy decisions. I have a right to know what I’m eating. Cloned foods should be prominently labeled so every American can make an informed choice.

ANITA TAYLOR

Santa Monica