I've been digging more as to what exactly these polymers are, and wilkepedia has a bit of info, See polyacrylamide and polymers. The manufacturer being Monsanto ( the makers of agent orange, roundup, and other bad nasties) sent a red flag up for me. After more digging I found that acrylamide, an unpolymerized form of that substance is a neurotoxin, and can be found as the product breaks down, either by sunlight, heat, or the exposure to ionic substances such as salt. Here's one of many papers discussing the dangers of polyacrylamide given in layman's terms: Polyacrylamide is added to soil and pesticides, it may be a major problem? Prof. Joe Cummins / Department of Biology / University of Western Ontario 8aug02 e-mail: jcummins@uwo.ca Acrylamide is a building block for the polymer, polyacrylamide, a material used in genetics in molecular biology laboratories as a matrix for separating nucleic acid components during DNA sequence analysis and during protein identification. In the world at large polyacrylamide is used in water purification to flocculate suspended organic matter, in irrigation water to improve soil texture and in pesticide formulations to limit spray drift. Recently the world health organization (WHO) had a closed meeting to reveal the finding that cooked vegetables had significant levels of acrylamide (1). The finding received worldwide notice because acrylamide is a potent nerve toxin in humans and effects male reproduction, causes birth defects, and cancer in animals. The WHO releases implied that the acrylamide finding was a surprise and that the pollutant probably arose from cooking the vegetables (1). The WHO report failed to mention the extensive global use of polyacrylamide in pesticide formulations and in soil treatment and the predictable residues of the polymer in vegetables such as potato or in grain. The addition of polyacrylamide to pesticide formulations is considered a trade secret and rarely reported while the soil treatment in irrigation water covers a million or more acres in the United States (US) and very large farmland areas worldwide. Even though the coverage of food crops with polyacrylamide formulations is staggering there seem to no available reports on polyacrylamide levels in food crops. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) serves a s both promoter and regulator of the use of polyacrylamide (PAM) in agriculture and that agency does not appear to have required thorough testing of the human and environmental consequences of polyacrylamide use.. Polyacrylamide is designated a non-toxic additive and that may explain why there has been little concern over its accumulation in food crops. Of course polyacrylamide may be contaminated with its toxic building block, acrylamide, and for that reason a limit of 500ppm acrylamide in polyacrylamide preparations has been arbitrarily determined to be acceptable for use in agriculture or water treatment. Furthermore, the polyacrylamide preparations (PAM) used in irrigation is most frequently a copolymer associated with acrylic (3) or other polymer plastic to provide stability, the polyacrylamide used in water treatment is often the co-polymer while the product used in pesticide formulations is protected as a trade secret but is likely to be a co-polymer. It has been reported that PAM hydrogels degrade to release acrylamide and acrylate (4)[acrylate is a known teratogen] and corporate Material Data Safety Sheets sometimes indicate that acrylamide is a foreseeable degradation product of PAM and that acrylonitirile (a mutagen and carcinogen) and cyanide are thermal decomposition products of polyacrylamide super absorbent (5). There are studies showing that acrylamide is released from polyacrylamide after exposure to light and elevated temperature (6,7) while other studies concluded that acrylamide is not released from polyacrylamide during degradation (8,9). Glutarimide (a component of the drug thalidomide) a pharmacologically active compound was identified as a significant breakdown product of heated polyacrylamide and the authors of that study stressed the need for fuller study of the breakdown products of polyacrylamide (9). There seems to be a clear-cut difference of opinion over the breakdown products of polyacrylamide. The authorities who maintain that acrylamide is not a breakdown product of polyacrylamide stress that those who identify acrylamide as a breakdown product do not find the chemical as a large proportion of the breakdown products of polyacrylamide. That seems to be a specious argument, as if the thermal degradation products dioxin or polyaromatic hydrocarbons are inconsequential because they are produced in relatively small amounts when they are among the most dangerous pollutants known. Moreover, the studies claiming to find little or no acrylamide in the breakdown products of polyacrylamide seem to have ignored the fact that the materials used commercially are most frequently co-polymers of acrylic acid or other polymers and the actual breakdowns usually take place on the surface of plant roots, leaves or stems or in the soil matrix. Certainly, polyacrylamide residue levels in food crops should have been studied as soon as polyacrylamide began to be used in pesticide formulations and irrigation water and such residues should be studied in the future. Regulatory agencies, such as, USDA and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations seems to be negligent in approving widespread employment of polyacrylamide hydrogels and pesticide additives without having undertaken realistic analysis of the breakdown products and potential pollutants consumed by humans or released to the environment. It is rather discomforting to learn that foods we eat may be saturated with plastic polymer and their unspecified breakdown products and soon we may be saturated as well. Just thought I'd pass on that info for any of you who, like me, are now going to move my moss experiment outside where it won't harm me! Here is a link that might be useful: Polyacrylamide...a major problem?

Sorry, I think we are looking at this the wrong way. IMO, the question is not whether the cloned animal is safe for consumption (if the parent was safe, then the clone should be safe if it is a true clone, not true for GM). The real question is why clone livestock at all? What is in it for the farmer/rancher? To me that is the rub, and that is why cloning should not be permitted, much less considered organic. The logical extension of cloning animals is taking what we have done with our so-called improved breeding programs to the next level. i.e. unimproved heritage sheep can exist quite nicely on their own. They breed, they birth, they eat. All with little human intervention required. But wait, we want more, faster, bigger. Now we have sheep that need AI, need assistance in birthing, and extra feed to thrive. Same with hogs, chickens, turkeys. What does cloning do for this scenario? No second set of genes needed at all. No breeding. No birthing!?! (Frankly, I'm not sure about that one. I think it depends on how the cloning is done. Guess I will do more research.) Only the biggest, fastest growing animals will be cloned. No genetic variation. No need to survive to get old enough to breed. Only need to live long enough to slaughter. Maybe they could all just die the same day. Cut out the slaughtering altogether. Factory farming taken to its ultimate climax! What a future we have to look forward to.

You probably do have some patented broms, HDD. I think there are a number of them, including Neo. carolinae Tricolor 'Perfecta'. I don't know of any enforcing that goes on with the propagation of that thing-- just about everyone has it. 'Ultima' is patented but I didn't find that out until after I bought a pup at a convention. There was no tag saying that, and it hasn't stopped me from selling pups either. I don't think anyone is going to go after the small grower, so I don't worry about it. I seem to remember hearing that Neo. carolinae 'Mother' had a patent covering not only it but also all of its offspring, making it illegal to use any of them for breeding. 'Mother' itself is seldom seen; the people who have it don't seem inclined to share it, but its babies are everywhere, so I don't know how you can control that. We grow a lot of Globbas too, and several years ago we tried to purchase some corms of the 'Jungle Jewels' series, which are patented. This in and of itself seemed odd to me because I had always assumed that a patented plant had to be a hybrid or sport or a GMO of some sort, but these are wild-collected species, so how can anyone hold a patent on them? At any rate, the grower/patentholder (who happens to be a friend of my husband's) gave us a stern lecture about not propagating them, and when Ken told him we wanted to try them as cut flowers he said no, we couldn't do that either! He never did send us the plants, I guess he figured we weren't to be trusted, LOL! Fortunately for us, we already had a couple of unpatented clones of that same species that we like better anyway, so we'll stick with those. Renaming and selling patented plants goes on all the time, sadly. From what I've heard pretty much all of the major tissue culture labs are guilty of this. David Shiigi had a lawsuit over a lab that released his Guz. 'Puna Gold' under another name. I don't know what the outcome of that suit was, but it's hardly an isolated incident.

There are two possibilities here. One is that you misunderstood what they were saying (poor communications). The other is that whoever told you this was not knowledgeable on the subject (ignorance). My guess is that what they were trying to say is that most cultivars cannot be reproduced sexually (whether from the original plant or from a clone of that plant). In other words, the seed from a Asimina triloba 'Wansevwan' does not produce another Asimina triloba 'Wansevwan', but rather just a plain species Asimina triloba, possibly with some noticeable similarities to the cultivar. Cloning (ie. vegetative reproduction) is necessary to reproduce most cultivars. The term botanical variety actually refers to a sub-group of a species of plant with characteristic differences, from other members of the species, that are inheritable and reproduce true-to-type. Gleditsia triacanthos v. inermis, crossed with Gleditsia triacanthos v. inermis, will produce Gleditsia triacanthos v. inermis. Although the term variety is frequently confused and often used to describe what is actually a cultivar, it is a different thing (especially when combined with the term botanical).