Stu Bykofsky: I'll pass on Frankenstein food, thanks
DID YOU HEAR that sound? So melodic, so clear, so sharp. A little like Tinker Bell tip-toeing on a xylophone.
DID YOU HEAR that sound?
So melodic, so clear, so sharp. A little like Tinker Bell tip-toeing on a xylophone.
It was the sound of consumer victory, something we don't hear a lot.
Pennsylvania state agricultural - mooo - officials have ruled that milk producers who don't use synthetic hormones will be allowed to say that whatever went into Barry Bonds' ass didn't go into their cows.
Previously, Pennsylvania state agriculture had said two other things:
1. Synthetic hormones in cows are peachy-keen, and don't affect the taste, quality or safety of the milk.
2. We're not going to tell you which milk has it and we won't let farmers who don't use the goo say so on milk cartons.
Who was Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff trying to protect? You?
Not me, but I'm just a foolish consumer.
This state rule - now reversed - coincided with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration rule that said two things:
1. Meat and milk from cloned animals is peachy-keen, tasty and safe.
2. FDA wants no labeling to let consumers know if what they are buying is original or a cloned copy.
Sound familiar? If it's so safe, why the secrecy?
We are in a Brave New World of biotechnology, some of it good (I guess), some of it bad (I'm sure). Before you accuse me of shaking my fist in the air to damn progress, first prove it is progress, and not just change, which is doing something just because scientists can do it.
When it comes to synthetic hormones and cloning, you can find experts to say it's the best thing since the Paris Hilton sex tape and opposing experts to say it's the worst thing since . . . the Paris Hilton sex tape.
Science doesn't know everything. It couldn't explain Hillary Clinton's short-lived giggle, for example. Science gave us Velcro, iPhones and zero-calorie soda. It also gave us thalidomide, junkpiles of radioactive waste and drugs intended to relieve one symptom that also spur suicide.
Around the same time as the milk and cloning controversies, scientists cloned human embryos using DNA from skin cells, and others created a rat's heart in a lab. Are these miracles of science, or a Cyclops stomping around in Nature's garden, blind to possible harmful consequences?
I don't trust the FDA's assurances that Frankenstein food is safe. Canada and the European Union ban milk from cows shot up with synthetic hormones. The only "reason" for the additive is more profit for producers, at the expense of the cows, which it often harms.
Mooo!
I'm not proud of everything I've put in my mouth over the years, but the meat's been the product of biology - two cows or pigs or sheep - not some guy in a white lab coat shmearing DNA like peanut butter. (On factory farms, animals usually don't get to mate. They're artificially inseminated, but it's male sperm and a female egg.)
If you want to eat something that calls a glass beaker "Daddy" and a petri dish "Mommy," OK by me. Just don't try to slide it on my plate when I'm not looking. If you're so damn proud of your freakozoid monster meat - label it!
When it comes to the food supply, government must err on the side of caution and always demand full disclosure so consumers - whether foolish or not - get information to make their choice.
And that's no bull---- (Mooo!) *
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: