is it thursday? then it must be soylent green day....

[Guest guest]

FDA Set to OK Food From Cloned Animals

 

December 28, 2006 — By Libby Quaid, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The government has decided that food from cloned animals is safe

to eat and does not require special labeling.

 

The Food and Drug Administration planned to brief industry groups in advance of

an announcement Thursday morning. The FDA indicated it would approve cloned

livestock in a scientific journal article published online earlier this month.

 

Consumer groups say labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be

uncomfortable with the idea of cloned livestock.

 

However, FDA concluded that cloned animals are " virtually indistinguishable "

from conventional livestock and that no identification is needed to judge their

safety for the food supply.

 

" Meat and milk from clones and their progeny is as safe to eat as corresponding

products derived from animals produced using contemporary agricultural

practices, " FDA scientists Larisa Rudenko and John C. Matheson wrote in the Jan.

1 issue of Theriogenology.

 

Labels should only be used if the health characteristics of a food are

significantly altered by how it is produced, said Barb Glenn of the

Biotechnology Industry Organization.

 

" The bottom line is, we don't want to misinform consumers with some sort of

implied message of difference, " Glenn said. " There is no difference. These foods

are as safe as foods from animals that are raised conventionally. "

 

Critics of cloning say the verdict is still out on the safety of food from

cloned animals.

 

" Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and

has a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labeling, " said

Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety.

 

Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of

America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows cloning results in more

deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive technologies.

 

The consumer federation will ask food companies and supermarkets to refuse to

sell food from clones, she said.

 

" Meat and milk from cloned animals have no benefit for consumers, and consumers

don't want them in their foods, " Foreman said.

 

The FDA scientists wrote that by the time clones reached 6 to 18 months of age,

they were virtually indistinguishable from conventionally bred animals.

 

Final approval of cloned animals for food is months away; the FDA will accept

comments from the public after issuing a draft risk assessment on Thursday.

 

Those in favor of the technology say it would be used primarily for breeding and

not for steak or pork tenderloin.

 

Cloning lets farmers and ranchers make copies of exceptional animals, such as

pigs that fatten rapidly or cows that are superior milk producers.

 

" It's not a genetically engineered animal; no genes have been changed or moved

or deleted, " Glenn said. " It's simply a genetic twin that we can then use for

future matings to improve the overall health and well-being of the herd. "

 

Thus, consumers would mostly get food from their offspring and not the clones

themselves, Glenn said.

 

Still, some clones would eventually end up in the food supply. As with

conventional livestock, a cloned bull or cow that outlived its usefulness would

probably wind up at a hamburger plant, and a cloned dairy cow would be milked

during her breeding years.

 

That's unlikely to happen soon, because FDA officials have asked farmers and

cloning companies since 2001 to voluntarily keep clones and their offspring out

of the food supply. The informal ban would remain in place for several months

while FDA accepts comments from the public.

 

Approval of cloned livestock has taken five years because of pressure from big

food companies nervous that consumers might reject milk and meat from cloned

animals.

 

To produce a clone, the nucleus of a donor egg is removed and replaced with the

DNA of a cow, pig or other animal. A tiny electric shock coaxes the egg to grow

into a copy of the original animal. Cloning companies say it's just another

reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination, yet there can be

differences between the two because of chance and environmental influences.

 

Some surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with food from cloned

animals; 64 percent said they were uncomfortable in a September poll by the Pew

Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonpartisan research group.

 

Source: Associated Press

 

 

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure

that just ain't so.

- Mark Twain