October 17, 2006

 

Cloned meat may soon make its debut, with FDA's approval 

 

 

Meat and milk from cloned animals could be making their way to supermarket shelves in the near future, with an endorsement from the FDA expected at the end of the year.

 

Ever since October 2003 when the FDA released its first draft document concluding that clones and their offspring are safe to eat, cloning companies have taken it as a sign to expand operations.

 

With a final decision expected at the end of the year, the livestock industry may soon be faced with the choice of whether to produce cloned animals for the market and whether consumers would be receptive of them.

 

New studies indicating that milk and meat from cloned livestock and their offspring pose no risks to consumers is causing FDA to rethink its policies on a ban on the marketing of meat from cloned animals.

 

Stephen F. Sundlof, the FDA's chief of veterinary medicine said that FDA evaluations have shown that the food from cloned animals is safe.

 

Since scientists can now clone cattle, horses, pigs, goats and other mammals, the livestock industry now has the option of cloning these animals.

 

Cloning companies tout the advantages of cloning, saying it would provide consistency and quality unheard of in conventional breeding and solve a host of problems common to agriculture. For example, semen would no longer be necessary and farmers would be able to have the offspring of castrated males through cloning.  Cloning also allows farmers to have more superior milk producers, allowing dairies to produce more milk with less cows.

 

But to get the policy passed, FDA would have to face a gamut of groups opposed to cloning, some of which were major food companies such as Kraft Foods, Dannon, General Mills and Nestl¨¦ USA. 

 

Ironically, despite the advantages cloning brings, dairies prefer to protect the billions of marketing dollars they spent on assuring the public of milk's nutritional values, something they believed would come under threat with the negative public perception of cloning.

 

In fact, surveys show that more than 60 percent of the US population is uncomfortable with cloned animals due to religious and ethical reasons.

 

Advocacy groups want the FDA to regulate cloned farm animals one type at a time, like the way it approves new drugs, instead of a blanket approval. However, doing so would slow down the approval process severely. 

 

Some are also questioning the ethics of cloning and the risks it carries for pregnant animals and their offspring, not to mention the environmental impact such clones would have on conventional animals.

 

Washington-based Center for Food Safety said FDA should also regulate clones, not just genetically engineered animals, as New Animal Drugs.

 

However, the FDA has determined that clones are a class apart from genetically engineered animals.

 

While FDA said it would regulate genetically engineered animals the way it regulates pharmaceuticals, if any does get to the market, it has no such restrictions on cloned animals. 

 

One reason for the FDA's approval is the growing amount of research attesting to the safety of cloned meat, one of them by Austin-based ViaGen Inc., a major producer of cloned farm animals.

 

Studies showed that protein composition, fatty acid profiles and other tests done on the offspring of clones by an independent lab, were largely the same as that for conventional animals.

 

Other studies showed that tests on blood and urine measures, including various hormone levels and biochemical indicators obtained from clones were indistinguishable from those obtained from conventional animals.

 

Because cloned animals are so similar to conventional animals, meat from cloned animals could be already in the market and there would be no way to tell, experts said.