Cloned Beef Burgers: "Delicious"

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"Clearly his family tree was gone because he was neutered, but now with cloning I have three more bulls from him and gained back a lost genetic gold mine," says Marquess, who breeds cattle for beef, rodeo, and reproduction.

With a herd of 150 Longhorn cattle, Marquess says that cloning will help create cleaner herds of cattle with fewer diseases. Today, he has at least 12 of his best bulls and cows cloned, some for their prize-winning capabilities, some for their ability to produce low-fat meat, and at least one for her ability to produce large calves. "Because it's so expensive to clone an animal, we make sure that we choose the best of the best and test them for every disease possible," he says.

Grocery shelves

Since it costs upwards of $16,000 to produce a clone, it's unlikely that any cloned animals themselves will be used for meat or milk. Rather, their offspring and future lines slowly will make their way into the food system, a process that will take a minimum of five years for beef and two and a half years for pork, say experts. (See the slide show on cloned foods.)

In its draft guidance, the FDA notes that because of their cost and rarity, clones will be used as are any other elite breeding stock—to pass on naturally occurring, desirable traits such as disease resistance and higher-quality meat to production herds. "Because clones will be used primarily for breeding, almost all of the food that comes from the cloning process is expected to be from sexually reproduced offspring and descendents of clones and not the clones themselves," says the draft.

CEO Mark Walton of ViaGen, the largest cloning company in the U.S., believes that by the time the meat and milk starts hitting grocery stores in five years, the public hopefully will have overcome a lot of the current skepticism. Walton, whose company has cloned more than 250 animals so far, certainly has his work cut out for him. Even today, only a few breeders are willing to experiment with cloning because of the societal taboos and because it's so expensive.

Walton maintains that the Center for Food Safety's allegation that many clones have deformities is one of many common misconceptions. "Such assertions are based on obsolete data, which the National Academy of Sciences has already looked into twice," says Walton.

The FDA is likely to issue a final, formal approval of cloned food before the end of the year. Experts say the agency will probably make the United States the first country to allow products from cloned livestock to be sold in grocery stores. Trimmer, Mower, and the rest of the staff at Cyagra aren't waiting. Though the steaks are gone, Trimmer is using her culinary skills to make the most of the ground beef they have on hand. Besides hamburgers, she's using the meat to make chili, tacos, and meatballs for spaghetti Bolognese.

Click here for the slide show on cloned foods.

Gogoi is a contributing writer for BusinessWeek.com.