Did you see or read the news last week regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s declaration that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are as safe to eat as natural versions?

The only good news in the 968-page report was that the FDA asked meat producers to keep cloned cattle, pigs, and goats out of the food supply during a transition period of unspecified length. Hey, FDA, here’s some unsolicited advice: How about making that transition period a hundred years?

Maybe by 2108 our federal government will have finally learned a lesson: it’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature. I made the same point regarding genetically modified (GMO) crops in my new book, Perfect Weight America. What happening with GMO technology is that scientists have figured out a way to take genes from one organism and insert them into another to make them grow higher, larger, denser, and more resistant to insect infestation. While this is a laudable goal, the problem is that scientists are adding a gene to a food that wasn’t originally part of that food, which is unnatural and changes the DNA character of the crop. That’s like mating an elephant with a corn plant—it’s just not going to work. My friend Jeffrey Smith, author of the groundbreaking book Genetic Roulette, quipped that GMO should stand for “God Move Over.”

I feel the same way about cloned meat, which kind of makes my skin crawl. I saw a report where cloning advocates acknowledged that the technology behind it has a “yuck factor.” To make a clone, scientists remove the DNA from the nucleus of a normal egg and replace it with DNA from one of the herd, giving the new nucleus a tiny electrical shock to zap the egg into growing into a copy of the original animal. Unlike GMO crops, no new genes are introduced or modified in the process, but that’s damning with faint praise.

Meat producers have been cloning cattle since 1998 and pigs since 2000. They say that we might see steaks, pork, and dairy products derived from clones available in your local supermarket in three to five years. I’m not surprised that cloned meat and dairy are in our future, but I hope Americans do something about it. Other nations wouldn’t tolerate this crud.

It looks like some of the nation’s biggest grocery companies are digging in their heels, however, saying they’ll keep cloned meat and dairy products off their shelves. Kroger, which also owns Ralphs, Food4Less, and several other chains, announced that they’re not going to accept cloned products from their suppliers. Ditto for Safeway (which also owns Vons). The makers of Alta Dena and Swiss milks brands announced they would not accept milk from cloned animals.

I will not knowingly eat foods derived from cloned animals or genetically modified ingredients until we have a solid body of research regarding their short-term and long-term effects. It doesn’t look that will happen any time soon. In the meantime, we’ll be hearing a lot more about cloned meat and cloned dairy products, which is sure to become a lightning rod as word gets out. I’m like others who feel there is a science-fiction stigma attached to cloned animals. What’s wrong with the naturally produced livestock that has served us well for centuries?

Let’s move to less creepy subjects. Now for some Perfect Weight America book news: We haven’t landed any national publicity that I can speak of, so I’m waiting for something to break there. Meanwhile, our book giveaway is going great, and I’m feeling that the message of reaching your perfect weight is starting to get out in the places where the tour has taken me so far...