GMW: FDA Set To Approve Milk, Meat From Clones

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GMW: FDA Set To Approve Milk, Meat From Clones

" GM WATCH " <info

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:31:39 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.Groups say FDA should ban sale of food from clones

2.FDA Is Set To Approve Milk, Meat From Clones

3.Northeast China pigs cloned from somatic cells

 

EXTRACT: " Cloning is completely unnecessary and will increase animal

cruelty in food production, yet the industry wants to test their cloned

foods on the American public, " said Joseph Mendelson, legal Director for

the Center for Food Safety. (item 1)

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1.Groups say FDA should ban sale of food from clones

By Christopher Doering

Reuters News Service, October 12 2006

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews & storyID=2006-10\

-12T210746Z_01_N12375395_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-FOOD-CLONING-FDA-DC.XML & WTmodLoc=SciHe\

alth-C4-Health-4

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Citing public health, ethical and animal cruelty

concerns, consumer and religious groups on Thursday urged federal

regulators to issue a moratorium on the introduction of food made from

cloned animals.

 

In a petition to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Center for

Food Safety, the Humane Society of the United States and others said

there is still too much uncertainty over the safety of food from cloned

animals.

 

" Cloning is completely unnecessary and will increase animal cruelty in

food production, yet the industry wants to test their cloned foods on

the American public, " said Joseph Mendelson, legal Director for the

Center for Food Safety.

 

The advocacy groups want FDA to require health and environmental

reviews before allowing food from cloned animals to be sold. A blue

ribbon

panel also should be established to review the ethical issues tied to

animal cloning.

 

Additionally, they asked the agency to regulate cloned animals as " new

animal drugs, " using the argument that processors are making changes

that affect the body of the animal.

 

An FDA spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

 

At present, selling food made from cloned animals is not approved in

the United States.

 

The FDA in October 2003 issued a draft risk assessment saying food from

cloned animals and their offspring was as safe as conventional food.

But an FDA panel later urged more research into the new technology,

delaying a final decision which has yet to be made.

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2.FDA Is Set To Approve Milk, Meat From Clones

Rick Weiss

Washington Post,, October 17, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/16/AR2006101601337.\

html

 

Three years after the Food and Drug Administration first hinted that it

might permit the sale of milk and meat from cloned animals, prompting

public reactions that ranged from curiosity to disgust, the agency is

poised to endorse marketing of the mass-produced animals for public

consumption.

 

The decision, expected by the end of this year, is based largely on new

data indicating that milk and meat from cloned livestock and their

offspring pose no unique risks to consumers

 

" Our evaluation is that the food from cloned animals is as safe as the

food we eat every day, " said Stephen F. Sundlof, the FDA's chief of

veterinary medicine, who has overseen the long-stalled risk assessment.

 

Farmers and companies that have been growing cloned barnyard animals

from single cells in anticipation of a lucrative market say cloning will

bring consumers a level of consistency and quality impossible to attain

with conventional breeding, making perfectly marbled beef and reliably

lean and tasty pork the norm on grocery shelves.

 

But groups opposed to the new technology, including a coalition of

powerful food companies concerned that the public will reject

Dolly-the-Lamb chops and clonal cream in their coffee, have not given up.

 

On Thursday, advocacy groups filed a petition asking the FDA to

regulate cloned farm animals one type at a time, much as it regulates

new

drugs, a change that would drastically slow marketing approval. Some are

also questioning the ethics of a technology that, while more efficient

than it used to be, still poses risks for pregnant animals and their

newborns.

 

" The government talks about being science-based, and that's great, but

I think there is another pillar here: the question of whether we really

want to do this, " said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at

the Consumer Federation of America.

 

That there is a debate at all about integrating clones into the food

supply is evidence of the remarkable progress made since the 1996 birth

of Dolly, the world's first mammalian clone, created from an udder cell

of an anonymous ewe.

 

Scientists have now applied the technique successfully to cattle,

horses, pigs, goats and other mammals. Each clone is a genetic replica of

the animal that donated the cell from which it was grown.

 

Cloning could solve a number of long-standing farm problems. Many prize

males are not recognized as such until long after they have been tamed

by castration. With cloning, that lack of semen would not matter.

Cloning also allows farmers to make many copies of exceptional milk

producers; with natural breeding, cows have only one offspring per

year, and

half are males.

 

In the eyes of many in agriculture, cloning is simply the latest in a

string of advances such as artificial insemination and in vitro

fertilization that have given farmers better control over animal

reproduction.

 

" Clones are just clones. They are not genetically engineered animals, "

said Barbara Glenn, chief of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology

Industry Organization.

 

Results of Clone Studies

 

Two new studies and a number of earlier ones have compared the meat and

milk from clones and conventional livestock. A summary of the earlier

findings:

 

* A 2002 Japanese study found " no biologically significant differences "

in blood counts and blood chemistry, chemical composition of milk or

meat, digestibility of meat fed to rats, allergenicity, or health or

behavior of rats raised on clonal food.

 

* A 2004 study of rats raised on milk and meat from cloned animals

showed no differences in growth rates, food consumption, behavior and

reflexes, or breeding. Measures of their blood and urine were the same as

for rats fed conventional chow, and their tissues were normal at autopsy.

 

* Another 2004 study found milk from cloned and conventional cows to be

biochemically identical.

 

* A 2005 study also found the two types of milk to be virtually

identical; all but 12 of more than 100 meat measures were also the

same. Eight

of the measures that were higher in the clones were for desirable fats

and fatty acids that had been selected for in those clones. The other

four were all within normal range.

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3.Northeast China pigs cloned from somatic cells

People's Daily, October 17 2006

 

The Northeast China Agricultural University (NCAU), the Harbin

Municipal Science & Technical Bureau and their cooperative unit

announced their

successful cloning of local pigs with the use of somatic cells last

Saturday. Three cloned baby pigs have been doing well and normally since

their birth on October 12.

 

Dr. Liu Zhonghua, leader of the project who comes from the Life Science

College of the NCAU, acknowledged that the three cloned baby pigs,

unlike pigs cloned in the past, had taken somatic cells from a three-day

old piglet as donor cells.

 

The Northeast China local pigs, noted for being reproductive and

adaptable with a good meat quality, are a leading fine breed under the

state

protection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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