We've discussed cloned animals and their offspring a few times over the past couple of weeks and it's obviously an issue that's not going to go away any time soon. It's always interesting to hear what industry experts have to say on the topic because they're often divided on the issue and provide diverse insight on the matter.

Patrick Cunningham is the most recent person to offer his two cents and the animal geneticist from Trinity College in Ireland says that tracking meat that comes from cloned animals is entirely possible. We already know that the USDA requested a voluntary moratorium asking meat producers to voluntarily keep cloned meat from hitting the market, but despite this, cloned meat is likely already part of the food chain. But according to Cunningham, a tracking system could easily determine whether the meat you're buying at your local supermarket came from a clone. Europe and Canada already use a tracking system thanks to multiple outbreaks of mad cow disease and Cunningham says all that an animal DNA database with the word "clone" next to the applicable animals would be a simple enough solution.

This all seems to end up back at the same point: if the FDA says cloned meat is really no different in terms of health than meat from a regular animal, is tracking really necessary and should cloned meat require some sort of label indicating its origin? That doesn't seem to be as much of an issue as the need for a tracking system when cloning and genetic modification are united and "exceptional animals, like goats that excrete useful proteins in their milk" are created.

» Wired Science