 | | 12-28-2006, 09:05 PM |
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| FDA endorses safety of meat and milk from cloned animals
Quote:
FDA rules meat from cloned animals is safe to eat
By Karen Kaplan
Times Staff Writer
4:52 PM PST, December 28, 2006
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally endorsed the safety of meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats, but the agency's 678-page report failed to satisfy critics who say their opposition is rooted in concerns over ethics, not science.
"Neither the agency nor animal scientists are qualified to tell us whether and when it is ethically acceptable for humans to alter the essential nature of animals," said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington.
She and others said the time has come for a national discussion about the wisdom of creating tailor-made animals in laboratories, regardless of whether it is scientifically possible to do so.
"Congressional hearings might start a robust societal dialogue on those issues," said Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Polls show Americans are hardly clamoring for bacon cheeseburgers made from cloned animals or their offspring. A survey this month by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64% of respondents are uncomfortable with the idea of cloning animals, let alone eating them.
Such concerns were outside the scope of the FDA's scientific review.
The agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine focused on the health of cloned animals and their progeny, tracking them with physical examinations and blood tests and comparing the results to animals bred conventionally. Researchers also subjected meat and milk from clones and their offspring to detailed chemical analysis.
"We looked at essential elements like vitamins, fatty acids -- a whole array of different components -- to try to determine if there was any distinguishable difference between foods from clones and their offspring compared to foods from conventionally raised animals," said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine. "There was no difference."
The report didn't address the contentious issue of whether products derived from clones would require special labeling.
Cloning allows farmers and ranchers to create an identical twin of prized animal -- perhaps a dairy cow that's an unusually prolific milk producer or a bull whose offspring make for consistently lean and juicy steaks.
A voluntary moratorium has kept most cloned animals and their offspring out of the food supply, though ranchers say at least a few dozen have gone to slaughterhouses. The moratorium will remain in effect until the FDA issues its final ruling, possibly by the end of 2007.
If the report is adopted, the United States would become the first country to approve the use of animal cloning in food production, Sundlof said.
To create a clone, a normal egg is removed from a donor cow and the genes are replaced with DNA from the animal to be copied. An electric shock induces the egg to grow into a genetic copy of the original. It is then implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother.
Cloning is simply an extension of assisted reproduction technologies that ranchers have been using since the 1950s, said Amy Iager,Ö co-owner of a mid-sized dairy farm in Fulton, Md.
Since clones cost about $20,000 to produce, they are used primarily for breeding while their offspring head to slaughterhouses or milking barns.
The FDA's risk assessment found that cloned animals are more likely to suffer from birth defects and other health problems that can lead to death in utero or shortly after birth. But those problems have already been seen with other breeding technologies, and current federal inspections would keep any unsuitable animals out of the food supply, Sundlof said.
In fact, he said, there's no reason to treat a clone differently from the rest of a herd.
That conclusion makes consumer advocates fear that products from clones will wind up in grocery stores and restaurants without special labeling that would give shoppers the opportunity to avoid the products.
Sundlof said the FDA only has the authority to require labeling if a food includes a harmful substance or is missing an essential element -- neither of which appears to be the case with cloned animal products.
Still, he said, the agency will hold off on making a decision on labeling until it reviews public comments that are received over the next 90 days.
In the absence of mandatory labeling, some producers may be able to advertise that their products are not derived through cloning, just as milk producers can say that their animals were not treated with supplemental bovine growth hormone, he said.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
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Interesting. Not sure where I stand on this. Thoughts? __________________ (i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
e. e. cummings - somewhere i have never traveled
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