To be honest, I haven’t really given much thought whether my milk or meat comes from a farm animal that’s unique in every way… or whether it has come from a cloned specimen. That’s probably because there isn’t a significant amount of cloned livestock out there… yet. Now that ViaGen is offering a program that tracks cloned animals with ease, though, I think I might be interested in knowing when I’m eating the real thing, or the carbon copy.
The following is a statement by Mark Walton, President of ViaGen, and Dave Faber, CEO of TransOva:
ViaGen and TransOva Genetics, the national leaders in the livestock cloning industry, have developed the supply chain management program to track cloned livestock. This system will allow marketers to provide consumers with truthful and accurate labels.
Our companies worked with more than 20 groups in the food industry chain to develop a program that addresses the marketing needs of their customers.
This proactive effort, to track clones from birth to death, will be managed through a third party registry. Each time the animal moves from one owner to another, it will be documented in the national registry. It works in the same manner as process-verified food systems like the Certified Organics Program; meat certified Halal; or coffee that is labeled Fair Trade.
With fewer than 600 clones in existence today, consumers can be confident that this system will provide them with reliable information about the status of food products from clones.