Having A Cow Over Cloned Beef

A protest over the safety of food derived from cloned animals Wednesday may have revived a health debate, but is unlikely to trigger any changes in the way the food industry does business anytime soon.

Protesters dressed as cows marched to Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday to protest the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s preliminary finding that  food that derived from cloned animals is safe to eat.

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a participant in the rally, says the debate centers on consumer confidence.

“We don’t know what’s safe,” said Greenfield, who makes no claim to understanding the science.  “The majority of Americans don’t want products from cloned animals. If cloning is approved, there needs to be appropriate labeling because consumers have a right to know.”

The FDA isn’t recommending additional labeling for food derived from adult clones and their offspring. It says milk derived from cloned cows is the same as milk from other cows so there’s no “science-based reason” to label the product differently.

The demonstration, which included members of the Consumer Federation of America, National Farmers Union, Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, Humane Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists, urged the FDA to go slow before approving the use of cloned animals to produce food.

So far, there’s been no rush to bring cloned foods to the market for either the $55 billion-a-year beef industry or the $90-billion-a-year dairy industry.

Chris Waldrop, director of the Consumer Federation of America, a watchdog group in Washington, says use of cloning would reduce the genetic diversity of the nation’s herds and could make the animals susceptible to disease or  hereditary defect in the future.

“There’s also the issue about animal welfare,” Waldrop says. “There are high rates of miscarriage and birth defects among clones.

The FDA declined to respond directly to the demonstrators’ charges and referred inquiries to information its Web site.

In a December, 2006 draft report, the agency concluded that meat and milk from clones of adult cattle and goats or their offspring are as safe to eat as products from conventionally bred animals.

The FDA says its findings parallel a 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences.

The agency report also says cloning is expensive and it’s therefore unlikely clones will be routinely slaughtered. Instead, clones will be used as breeders because they will pass on favorable traits that boost production and may cut cost. The offspring of clones will be used as food – not the clones themselves – and the offspring will be the result of traditional reproduction.

At the same time, the FDA has asked breeders to “voluntarily refrain” from introducing food derived from cloned animals into commerce until the public comment period ends April 2 and it has issued a final report.

In case you are wondering, an animal clone is a genetic copy of the DNA of a so-called donor animal. You could think of the clone as an identical twin of the donor, but born at a different time. Cloning isn’t the same as genetic engineering, which involves adding, deleting or altering genes. Cloning doesn’t change the gene sequence of either the donor animal or its copy.
 
Thus far, the pubic debate had centered on cows, but cloning could easily be applied to other animals produced for food. For instance, the FDA says cloned pigs are safe, but notes that it doesn’t yet have enough data to reach a conclusion about sheep and therefore said sheep clones shouldn’t be used for human food.

Producers, for their part, are taking a cautious approach because consumers don’t fully understand what’s involved.

James H. Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute in Washington, D.C., says cloned animals pose no known health risk and time is needed to educate the public about how cloning works.

“We agree with the (FDA) report’s conclusion that the meat and milk from cloned animals are the same as those from conventional animals,” Hodges says in a prepared statement. “In our view, cloning is part of the evolution of breeding practices and technology that has significant potential to improve the quality of food products derived from animals.”

He urges the FDA to better educate the public about cloning, rather than just affirming the safety of cloned animals.

“A voluntary moratorium on the sale of meat from cloned animals remains in place,” Hodges says.

Connie Tipton, president of the Dairy Foods Association, a trade group in Washington, says the organization supports the moratorium on milk and meat from cloned animals entering the food supply until the public has had a chance to comment.