Oklahoma Legislator Authors Bill Outlawing Use of Aborted Fetuses in Product Manufacturing Industry

A shockingly strange bill has been introduced to the Oklahoma Legislature to prohibit "the manufacture or sale of food or products which use aborted human fetuses."

The bill was introduced late last week by Republican State Sen. Ralph Shortey and first noticed by the Oklahoma State University college newspaper The Daily O'Collegian:

"Ralph Shortey (R-Oklahoma City) authored Senate Bill 1418, which effectively bans the selling or manufacture of food products that contain aborted fetuses or which used aborted fetuses in the development of their ingredients."

The state senator told KRMG that he's done research and found reports that companies have used stem cells in the research and development of food.

“I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be.  What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here," Sen. Shortey told the radio station. What the senator told the station next may get you sick.

“There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors," says Shortey.

KRMG notes that some have accused that the proposed bill is a back door attempt to ban stem cell research. Shortey told the station it is not, but said he would support and vote for a ban on stem cell research in the state.

While food makers have denied the claims, NPR's Bill Chappell speculates that Shortey may have gotten the idea from a boycott directed at PepsiCo which has worked with Senomyx:

"Based in San Diego, Senomyx has been accused of using proteins derived from human embryonic kidney cells in its research, which has been used by many large food companies. An article in the Miami New Times summarizes those claims, notes the company's denial of them — and also notes that in 2003, the company filed a patent for 'recombinant methods for expressing a functional sweet taste receptor.'

That patent, for what is essentially an automated taste test, was granted in 2008. It mentions HEK 293, or Human Embryonic Kidney 293, a widely available cell line that was originally cultured in the early 1970s from a human embryo in the Netherlands."

Perhaps Shortey noticed a British midwife that has made recent news for making, and then selling back, vitamin pills made from a new mother's placenta within a few hours of a baby being born. The Daily Mail writes that some of the benefits of consuming placenta are said to include enhanced breast milk production and a reduction in the risk of post-natal depression.

KOSU reports that Shortey’s bill was one of hundreds submitted just before the state’s Thursday deadline for legislators to get their bills entered for discussion in the upcoming session, which runs from Feb. 6 into late May.