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A KITTEN with two faces that meows out of both mouths at the same time has been born in Perth.

The kitten was delivered in a vet's surgery after its mother had complications with the birth.

The two-faced feline was one of three in a litter and appears to be doing well.

Veterinarian George Huber and nurse Louisa Burgess delivered the kitten.

Ms Burgess said that in her 12-year career she had never seen a two-faced cat.

“I have seen cats with two tails and extra legs, but not this,” she said.

“It has a full tummy and it survived the night so that is a good sign. It seems content, it meows and purrs."

The kitten eats out of just one mouth because of a cleft palate, but meows out of both simultaneously.

This year there have been several reports of two-faced kittens in the US. In August a kitten with four eyes, two noses and one mouth was reportedly born in Ohio, but died after five days. Watch the video of the kitten in Ohio here.

Another two-faced kitten was born in a litter of seven in Texas in February.

The answer is genetically modified products.

No doubt some GM products are in pet food - could be anything - grain, meat.  We don't know what we're eating these days.

This is only the beginning.  The National Food Standards A & NZ approves of GM food and it doesn't have to be labelled as long as it's only part of the finished product.  We have been eating it since 2001.

Their standards make no sense.  When we start having 2 headed babies - they might introduce stricter regulatons.

How do they ensure exactly how much GM content is in the final product?  They can't - they can only go on what they're told by the manufacturer.

Are GM foods being sold in Australia?

Yes.   Some of the packaged foods in supermarkets contain GM ingredients derived from approved GM commodity crops of cotton, corn, canola, soybean, sugar beet and potato. They appear as ingredients in many foods.

Cotton - considered a food because the oil can be consumed - is the only GM food commodity approved to be commercially grown in Australia. The other GM commodities are imported.   No fresh GM vegetables, fruit, meat, fish or other agricultural products are sold in Australia.

Are they safe?

All GM foods intended for sale in Australia and New Zealand must be subjected to a pre-market safety assessment by the independent government food regulator - the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) - and approved by a council of Australian and New Zealand health ministers. No GM food will be allowed onto the shelves unless it has gone through the safety assessment process.

Some foods containing GM foods from commodity crops have been in the marketplace in Australia for about five years. They have been in the food supply of other countries, such as the United States and Canada, for much longer. In that time, there has been no case reported worldwide of a GM food causing an adverse effect on human health [OECD Conference on the Scientific and Health Aspects of Genetically Modified Foods, February 2000].

Some GM ingredients may be used in the manufacturing process, but do not appear in the final food and these do not need to be labelled.   Some ingredients derived from GM plants - such as sugars, oils and some GM additives and processing aids - may have been refined to the extent that there is no residual genetic material or protein of the source plant in the final product.   Again, no special labelling is required.

Another exemption to the labelling requirements in processed foods are GM flavours, which are allowed to be present up to a level of one part in a thousand in the final food without being identified as GM.

Foods prepared from GM ingredients, additives and processing aids, but sold unlabelled at the point of sale for immediate consumption - e.g. restaurants, hotels and take-aways - are also exempt from labelling requirements.

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/newsroom/archive/geneticallymodifiedf1161.cfm

I am unable to understand what the topic is going on.

Canola is GM. It is a genetically modified version of the rape seed.

I don't know much about two headed kittens, but I do know a quack when I see one.




What unmitigated rubbish. Of all the possible reasons for mutagenesis, transgenic foods would have to be the least likely. The main culprits would be viral infections (we actually have some viral sequences in our DNA), aromatic hydrocarbons and other mutagenic chemicals, exposure to radiation (ionizing or high frequency electromagnetic) - or just random birth defects - they have been happening since prehistoric times.

That kitten was so adorable..

The problem with GM anything is the same as the problem with introduced species, except the risks are greater. You risk unpredictable disaster and massive loss of biological diversity. No-one could have predicted which introduced species would ravage Australia. Yet we now have enough common sense to set up a quarantine. Why do people have such difficulties seeing the same risk in GM? Do people have to actually see the disaster unfold before they can understand it?

oceanz wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2008 at 11:07am:


It was a freak.  Sad but poo happens.  Cats don't get to have ultra sounds, they get what they get. 

You get what you deserve as a human "bean".  i