Dec. 28, 2006 — The government declared Thursday that food from cloned animals is safe to eat. After more than five years of study, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that cloned livestock is "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock.
FDA believes "that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day," said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.
Officials said they don't think special labels are needed, although a decision on labeling is pending.
Because scientists concluded there is no difference between food from clones and food from other animals, "it would be unlikely that FDA would require labeling in those cases," Sundlof said.
Final approval is still months away; the agency will accept comments from the public for the next three months.
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.
However, FDA scientists said that by the time clones reached 6 to 18 months of age, they are virtually indistinguishable from conventionally bred animals.
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."
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.
