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FDA Finds No Safety Issues in Meat, Milk from Cloned Animals

By Truman Lewis
ConsumerAffairs.com

December 28, 2006

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The Food and Drug Administration says it has determined that milk and meat from cloned cows, pigs and goats and their offspring is safe to eat. If the decision stands, grocers would be allowed to sell milk and meat from cloned animals without any special labeling. Consumer groups responded quickly.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Public Citizen's Food & Water Watch called it "another example of the agency's willingness to disregard safety in the face of industry pressure."

"The safety of eating milk and meat from cloned animals is far from proven, with only a handful of studies and little long-term evidence," Hauter said.

"There are no consumer benefits from this questionable technology," said Carol Tucker-Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America. "Cloning will not produce safer or cheaper milk and meat. Having cloned cows produce more milk won't reduce milk prices."

"The FDA's draft risk assessment and management plan addressing the food safety issues surrounding cloned animals is better late than never," said Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Jaffe said the FDA "has been delinquent in waiting five years to begin this public evaluation of cloned animals, requiring consumers to rely on the food industry and cloning companies to voluntarily refrain from introducing cloning animals into the food supply."

Like Tucker-Foreman, Jaffe challenged the need for cloning.

"To date, the cloning industry has not provided the public with any information about why cloned animals are needed in food production, who benefits from their use, and how they might benefit the consumer at all," he said.

The FDA insisted there is no difference between products from cloned and natural animals.

"FDA found that it could not tell a healthy clone from a healthy conventionally bred animal," the agency said in its risk assessment document. "All of the blood values, overall health records and behaviors were in the same range for clones and conventional animals of the same breed raised on the same farm. FDA also saw that milk from dairy clones does not differ significantly in composition from milk from conventionally bred animals."

"The assessment was peer-reviewed by a group of independent scientific experts in cloning and animal health. They agreed with the methods FDA used to evaluate the data and the conclusions set out in the document," the agency said.

Today's recommendation triggers a 90-day period for public comment. That's expected to touch off a torrent of criticism from consumer and health groups as well as animal rights activists.

Many farmers and meat producers are eager to adopt cloning, which would allow them to respond more quickly to changing public tastes and to inexpensively make carbon copies of prized animals, more quickly upgrading the quality of their herds.

An animal clone is a genetic copy of a donor animal, similar to identical twins but born at different times. Cloning is not the same as genetic engineering, which involves altering, adding or deleting DNA; cloning does not change the gene sequence.

"Based on FDA's analysis of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and other studies on the health and food composition of clones and their offspring, the draft risk assessment has determined that meat and milk from clones and their offspring are as safe as food we eat every day," said Stephen F. Sundlof, D.V.M., Ph.D., director of FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine. "Cloning poses no unique risks to animal health when compared to other assisted reproductive technologies currently in use in U.S. agriculture."

Risk Management

The FDA's proposed risk management plan addresses risks to animal health and potential remaining uncertainties associated with feed and food from animal clones and their offspring.

The proposed plan outlines measures that FDA might take to address the risks that cloning poses to animals involved in the cloning process. These risks all have been observed in other assisted reproductive technologies currently in use in common agricultural practices.

One such measure could be that the agency would work with scientific and professional societies with expertise in animal health and reproduction to develop a set of care standards for animals involved in the cloning process. Although the agency does not have authority to address the ethics of animal cloning, the proposed risk management plan does state that FDA plans to continue to provide scientific expertise to interested parties working on these issues.

"Because the release of the draft risk assessment and proposed risk management plan marks the beginning of our interaction with the public on these issues, we are continuing to ask producers of clones and livestock breeders to voluntarily refrain from introducing food products from these animals into commerce so that we will have the opportunity to consider the public's comments and to issue any final documents as warranted," said Sundlof.

Public Comment

FDA is seeking comments from the public on the three documents for the next 90 days. Comments may be submitted online.

Written comments may be sent to: Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD, 20852. Comments must be received by Apr. 2, 2007 and should include the docket number 2003N-0573.

For more information, visit http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloneRiskAssessment.htm.

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