HEALTH-US: Watchdog Groups Uneasy About Cloned Animal Products
Aileen Wagefeld and Lisa Vives
NEW YORK, Jan 16 2008 (IPS) – Meat and milk from cloned animals are as safe to eat as those from conventionally bred animals and can therefore be sold immediately without any special labeling, the U.S. federal agency regulating food has concluded.
Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day, said Dr. Stephen Sundloff, food safety chief of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Meat or milk from sheep is not included in the assessment.
The ruling updates an earlier FDA draft risk assessment in 2006, which had been roundly criticised by several food safety organisations. Consumers also gave cloned foods a thumbs down. Some 30,000 comments were received from the public, about half of them worrying that cloned animal products would be sold without labels to identify them.
Earlier, in a survey of 1,000 people by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, more than six in 10 consumers (64 percent) were uncomfortable with the idea of animal cloning, including 46 percent who were very uncomfortable .
In a related move, the European Union #39s Food Safety Authority has issued a preliminary report that meat and milk from cloned animals is probably safe for humans. New Zealand and Australia have released reports with similar findings and Canada and Argentina are said to be close to doing the same.
Europe #39s FSA is accepting comments on the finding through Feb. 25.
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To produce clones, scientists grow copies of cells from the original animal in a lab dish, and then extract genetic material. The DNA from the animal to be cloned is inserted into an egg whose nucleus has been removed, and the resulting embryo is implanted in an animal that will serve as the clone #39s surrogate mother.
Cloning allows ranchers to replicate a prize-winning animal or replace one that is injured or aging. There are an estimated 650 live clones in the U.S., mostly cattle produced by closely held ViaGen Inc., based in Austin, Texas, and Trans Ova Genetics, of Sioux Center, Iowa.
As with the so-called green revolution, which promised greater yields but with more costly inputs, cloning livestock, proponents say, will foster the reproduction of animals that provide the leanest, most nutritious and best-tasting meat. It could enable ranchers to breed cattle that do not carry E. coli bacteria and are immune to mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease.
Food safety activists in the U.S. expressed disappointment that the FDA failed to order labeling of cloned food products. It has not been tested yet how people react to eating cloned meat or drinking milk from cloned animals, said Jaydee Hanson, policy assistant at the Washington-based Centre for Food Safety, and unless you label it you can #39t track it.
The Centre for Food Safety is a non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy group challenging harmful food production technologies and promoting sustainable alternatives.
We are working with the U.S. congress to require labeling of cloned foods if the FDA won #39t require it, says Hanson.
If companies begin using clones to breed food animals, they need to explain why, said Gregory Jaffe, director of the biotechnology project at the Washington-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Will it make any food product better, safer, cheaper or more sustainable? Clear evidence of benefits must be generated if consumers are going to accept cloned animals and their products.
While noting that most consumers will never eat a cloned animal , the CSPI does not dispute the FDA finding that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat.
Because a cloned calf costs about 15,000 to 20,000 dollars, or 10 times the cost of an average dairy calf, cloned animals will be used primarily as breeding stock for a new generation of beef cattle, dairy cows and pigs.
In 2003, Dolly, the first world #39s first cloned sheep born in Edinburgh, Scotland, died from a progressive lung disease and crippling arthritis at the age of six although she was predicted to have a life expectancy of at least 12 years.
The greatest worry many scientists have is that human clones even if they don #39t have monstrous abnormalities in the womb will need hip replacements in their teenage years and perhaps develop senile dementia by their 20th birthday, observed human cloning expert Dr. Patrick Dixon in a press interview.
Margaret Mellon, director of the Food and Environment Programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote: Animal cloning is a controversial technology with few, if any, benefits to consumers. Most cloned animals have severe defects and are more likely to die at an early age than ordinary farm animals.
Although successful clones may appear normal, the possibility remains that some may harbor subtle genetic defects that could impair their health or make them unsafe for consumption. The FDA should have required that cloned products be labeled as such and kept them off the market at least until it established a mandatory tracking system to allow retailers to avoid purchasing the products, Mellon said.
The Food and Drug Administration #39s decision to allow the sale of meat and milk from cloned animals releases another questionable technology into the food supply, said Patty Lovera of Food Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer rights organisation.
Anticipating an explosion in demand for the new technology, the Texas-based ViaGen opened ViaGen de Mexico earlier this year and also has offices in Canada. It is expected that many countries, especially in Latin America, will follow FDA #39s lead, according to director of business development and sales Blake Russell. Argentina and Brazil will present immediate opportunities, he said.
At the same time, a growing trend in food production has been towards organic, hormone-free, non-GMO, farmer-friendly, fair trade products. Whole Foods, the retail standard bearer for the organic industry, is said to have doubled its revenues in the last five years from 2.8 billion to 5.6 billion dollars.