Cloned beef: It's what's for dinner
The FDA declared it safe last year. And in a taste test, diners couldn't tell the difference.
By Karen Kaplan and Betty Hallock, Times Staff Writers
March 4, 2007
Cloned beef
The cloning genie is out of the bottle. It's going to happen in food distribution systems where people who eat the food could care less whether it's labeled this or that. It's just something that's going to keep them alive.
The cloned steak was served medium rare.
Inside the unusually hushed atrium of Campanile, the guests lifted slices of beef onto their plates. Executive chef Mark Peel had prepared the porterhouse with fleur de sel and cracked black pepper before pan-searing it with a little canola oil — a simple preparation to highlight the meat's natural flavor.
It was the centerpiece of a dinner party convened to taste the future of food.
After years of research, meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are moving toward supermarkets, restaurants and backyard barbecues. The Food and Drug Administration recently declared the fare safe to eat, although it took scientists 678 pages to make their case. They said the meat was so much like regular beef that special labeling would be unnecessary.
Thousands of consumers, unswayed by the promise of genetically superior steaks, have written the agency in opposition. Still, cloned products could become part of the food supply by year's end.
The general public has been shielded from cloned meat by a voluntary moratorium issued by the FDA in 2001. But six intrepid diners agreed to participate in cloned beef's debut on the culinary scene in a private dinner convened by The Times.
Several prospective diners declined the invitation.
Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation" and self-described omnivore, said: "I'd rather eat my running shoes than eat meat from a cloned animal."
Spago chef Lee Hefter, who recently opened the Beverly Hills steakhouse Cut, agreed to host this dinner before abruptly changing his mind.
"I don't want people to think that I would ever use it," he said. "I don't want to condone cloned beef. I don't want to eat it. I don't want it in my kitchen."
But Evan Kleiman, host of the weekly radio show "Good Food" on KCRW, accepted the invitation in spite of her initial revulsion at the idea of eating cloned meat.
USC sociologist Barry Glassner, author of "The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong," was so enthusiastic he asked whether his wife could join the party.
In the kitchen, Peel laid out the porterhouse steaks on his stainless steel worktable, along with packages of ground chuck and sirloin, which he molded into thick patties and sprinkled with salt and pepper.
The cloned meat, provided by the Collins Cattle ranch in Frederick, Okla., was accompanied by corresponding cuts of conventional beef. All were prepared in identical fashion. Peel's idea was to conduct a double-blind taste test — a 21st century version of the Pepsi Challenge.
"I'm actively trying not to guess," he said as he prepared his cast-iron skillets and copper sauteuses. "I don't want to say, 'This one feels more supple, this one feels less supple.' My hypothesis is that they will be very close, if not identical."
As the dinner guests sampled caramelized onion tarts with feta cheese, Peel considered whether cloned beef was the most unusual thing he'd prepared since his landmark restaurant opened in Los Angeles 18 years ago.
"Yes," he said. "I think so."
First course: the science
THE guests took their seats at the well-appointed table and began munching on grissini and sipping glasses of Bandol red wine.
UC Davis animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam pulled out a photo of a stout, jet-black Chianina bull from Canute, Okla., named Full Flush — one of the most sought-after sires of recent times.
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