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CLONED ANIMALS

With the advent of cloned livestock, yet another biotech science experiment may soon find its way to the American dinner table. In January 2008, the FDA essentially told the public that the meat and milk from cloned livestock are safe for human consumption. FDA's action flies in the face of widespread scientific concern about the risks of food from clones, and ignores the animal cruelty and troubling ethical concerns that the cloning process brings. The approval also goes against the will of Congress, who voted twice in 2007 to delay FDA's decision on cloned animals until additional safety and economic studies can be completed, and ignores the feelings of the American public, 150,000 of whom wrote to FDA opposing the approval during last year's public comment period. What's worse, FDA will not require labeling on cloned food, so consumers will have no way to avoid these experimental foods.

Animal cloning is a new technology with potentially severe risks for food safety. Defects in clones are common, and cloning scientists warn that even small imbalances in clones could lead to hidden food safety problems in clones' milk or meat. There are few studies on the risks of food from clones, and no long-term food safety studies have been done. Numerous opinion polls show that the majority of Americans do not want food from animal clones and are opposed to cloning on moral or ethical grounds.

The FDA's veterinary medicine advisory panel rebuked the agency in 2003 for its position, declaring that not enough research has been done to determine whether food derived from cloned animals is safe. In fact, livestock cloning raises numerous health and ethical concerns. Over 90 percent of cloning attempts fail, and cloned animals that are born have more health problems and higher mortality rates than sexually reproduced animals.

Given that researchers do not understand many of the health problems that arise throughout the lifecycles of cloned animals, the FDA acted irresponsibly in assuming that the foods produced from these animals are safe for humans to eat. According to Ian Wilmut, the leader of the team of scientists that cloned the sheep Dolly, determining the health impacts of food derived from clones must be based on the animals' complete health profiles. Such studies have not been done.

The Center for Food Safety has called on FDA to ban the use of clones in food production until the food safety and animal cruelty problems in cloning have been resolved, and until public discussions have addressed the troubling ethical issues that cloning brings. We also call on FDA, in the event that these pre-conditions can be met, to require labeling of food from animal clones.

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http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org