Ethics Newsline®

At issue: cloning, conditions faced by mass-produced chickens, and safety of pet foods

VARIOUS DATELINES
Questions over animal-welfare ethics were prominent in last week’s news. Among the top stories:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is leaning toward ruling that meat and milk from cloned animals are safe to eat, Forbes reports. Cloning of farm animals invokes a variety of ethical and scientific issues, including safety of the food supply, the impact of high-tech cloning of prize cattle on farms that choose to practice old-fashioned selective breeding methods, and claims that cloned animals will suffer because they tend to have more health problems at birth than conventionally bred animals, according to the report.
• Farming practices in Britain have sparked an ethics debate as a covertly taken video of factory-farmed chickens making its way around the Web. London’s Independent reports that the video shows thousands of chicks, some of which are limping or lifeless, crammed into a dimly lit shed. Critics have called on supermarkets and food distributors to stop selling meat from mass-produced chickens, saying the animals’ lives are often short and painful. In addition, critics claim that the birds typically have trouble walking because their legs cannot support their abnormally large bodies, which are genetically bred for high meat production.
• A South Carolina pet-food firm has agreed to a $3.1 million settlement in a class action lawsuit involving toxic dog food. The State of Columbia, South Carolina, reports that Diamond Pet Foods will establish a settlement fund to reimburse people who bought the contaminated food, which was linked to the deaths of 30 dogs. The company did not admit wrongdoing, but acknowledged that it failed to follow its own testing guidelines for ingredients delivered to one of its plants, according to the State.

Sources: State, Jan. 4 — Forbes, Jan. 4 — Independent, Jan. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 19, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 22, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 15, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 1, 2007 — Related Newsline Commentary, Sep. 17, 2007.