[HealthPillarWell] FDA Declares Food From Cloned Animals Safe

[Guest guest]

This is wrong is so many ways... Once they control the genes of

livestock, it is the same amount of power as controling the genes to

produce. Are we going to face a day when companies own the complete

rights to food? And when was that period for public comment? How

public can it be if it is not commonly known? So now by not

labeling this meat, they are going to try and ram this down our

throats, literally... Another example of our food supply being

corrupted by genetically altered horrors.

Other comments?

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

FDA declares food from cloned animals safe

 

By ANDREW POLLACK, New York Times News Service

January 21, 2004

 

Taken from:

http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/ne_food/article/0,2071,NPDN_14931_2591

354,00.html

 

Milk and meat from cloned animals are safe to eat, the Food and Drug

Administration has tentatively concluded, a finding that could

eventually clear the way for such products to reach supermarket

shelves and for cloning to be widely used to breed livestock.

 

The agency's conclusions are being released on Friday in advance of

a public meeting on the issue Tuesday in Rockville, Md. Agency

officials said that after receiving public comments, they hope by

late next spring to outline their views on how, if at all, cloning

would be regulated, including whether food from cloned animals

should be labeled.

 

But if the preliminary conclusion stands, labeling would not be

needed and there would be little regulation, Stephen Sundlof,

director of the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in an

interview.

 

" There appears to be few if any safety concerns, " Sundlof said. He

added, " If we consider them materially the same as traditional

foods, the role for the FDA would be minimal. "

 

There are now only several hundred cloned cattle in the nation's

total of about 100 million, so experts do not expect a big influx of

food from cloned animals if it were allowed. Cloning an animal can

cost about $20,000, much too expensive to use to make an animal just

for its milk or meat.

 

" That would make about a $100 hamburger, " said John C. Matheson, " a

senior FDA regulatory scientist who led the agency's assessment.

 

The major safety concern is that cloning results in many failed

animal pregnancies and abnormal babies that are larger than normal

and have other medical problems, raising the risk that milk or meat

from such animals could be tainted. But the FDA said that clones

that survive past early childhood appear to be as healthy as other

animals and therefore food from them should be safe.

 

Still, any move to allow food from cloned animals or their offspring

is expected to face some opposition. Some critics say the evidence

of safety is not sufficient. Even the FDA concedes its conclusions

are based on somewhat scanty data, particularly for animals other

than cows. Other critics say there are concerns to consider besides

food safety, like the ethical implications of cloning, its effects

on animal welfare and on farming.

 

" I think it warrants a discussion that goes beyond the narrowest

scientific issues, " said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food

policy at the Consumer Federation of America. She said polls have

shown U.S. consumers are ill at ease with animal cloning.

 

" When you say animal cloning, many people react as if you are at

least opening the door to human cloning, " she said.

 

Some food companies as well are cautious, worried that such food,

even if it is safe, might be shunned by consumers. That has happened

to some extent with genetically modified crops.

 

" It's fine to get the stamp of approval from the FDA, but we also

need to get the stamp of approval from consumers, " said Kathleen

Nelson, senior director for legislative affairs at the International

Dairy Foods Association, which represen5/8s companies that sell

milk, cheese and ice cream. She said that while biotechnology offers

benefits for the food industry, the FDA needs to build " a strong and

impressive body of science on the safety of the products. "

 

Cloning involves using a cell from an animal to make a nearly

genetically identical copy of that animal. Dolly the sheep, the

first clone of an adult mammal, was born in 1996. But the regulatory

status of food from cloned animals has been in limbo. In June 2001

the FDA asked cloning companies and farmers to voluntarily keep

off the market the milk and meat produced from clones, and from the

more conventionally bred offspring of clones, so it could assess the

potential risks.

 

That hAs contributed to financial struggles for the handful of small

companies hoping to make a business out of cloning. And it has

frustrated a few farmers and breeders who own clones, who now have

to dump milk from cloned cows and cannot sell semen from cloned

bulls.

 

" You milk it, you dump it, " said Karyn Schauf, owner of Indianhead

Holsteins, a breeder and dairy farm in Barron, Wis., that has two

clones of a now deceased prized dairy cow but cannot sell their

milk. " Not being able to treat them as regular animals really puts a

cap on their value, " she said.

 

Experts say the first use of cloning will be not for food but to

make copies of prize animals for breeding.

 

Donald P. Coover of Galesburg, Kan., who sells semen for breeding,

said that this year a,one he sold $100,000 worth of semen - enough

to inseminate 2,000 cows - from an Oklahoma bull named Full Flush.

With that kind of profit, it made sense to make clones of Full Flush

to provide even more semen, and to carry on providing the semen

after the original animal dies.

 

Smithfield Foods, a leading pork producer, has an agreement with

ViaGen, an animal cloning company in Austin, Texas, to explore the

use of cloning for breeding.

 

The use of cloned animals in breeding means that food from the

offspring of clones will enter the market in greater quantity than

from clones themselves.

 

Some experts say a major use of cloning will be to help in making

genetically engineered animals, like those that can produce

pharmaceuticals in their milk, or animals with genes to make them

disease resistant or their food more nutritious.

 

The FDA safety analysis did not look at genetically engineered

animals, whether produced using cloning or not, only at clones that

are copies of conventional animals. Genetic engineering introduces

additional risks and the agency wanted to tackle the simpler issue

of cloning first, officials said.

 

The FDA on Friday is releasing an 11-page summary of a larger risk

assessment it hopes to publish in the coming months. In its

analysis, it assumes that obviously malformed animals produced

through cloning would be rejected as sources of milk or meat. That

left the question of whether there could be more subtle

abnormalities that might, for instance, change the nutritional

quality or safety of the meat or milk.

 

The agency said that does not appear to be the case. It reached its

conclusion based on scientific literature and tests of the

composition of the blood and milk of clones.

 

The agency saw no problems with the safety of the conventionally bred

offspring of clones. The genetic problems that are thought to cause

the cloned animals do not carry over into the next generation, the

agency said.

 

The FDA also looked at the effects of cloning on animal welfare and

found there were some health problems, not only with the clones, but

with the surrogate mothers. Still, the agency said the problems were

not that much different from those caused by other techniques used

in farm breeding, such as in vitro fertilization or embryo flushing.

 

" We are looking at this as a continuation in the evolution of

reproductive technologies, " Sundlof said. And since the FDA does not

regulate these other techniques, it is not likely to regulate

cloning on the basis of protecting animal health, he said.

 

Gregory Jaffe, director of the biotechnology program at the Center

for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group, said the FDA

should not have had to rely on a voluntary industry moratorium until

now. He also said the agency has not yet stated what authority it

would use to regulate cloning, if it decides to. " They seem to be

playing catch-up, " he said.

 

FDA officials said they have been assessing the situation ever since

the first cows were cloned. Matheson said the agency asked for a

voluntary moratorium because " that's all we needed to do, " to keep

the animals off the market.