WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 2006
FDA: Food From Cloned Animals Is Safe
Agency Says It's 'As Safe To Eat As The Food We Eat Every Day'
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Play CBS Video Video FDA: Cloned Food Safe To Eat The FDA says cloned food are safe to eat, claiming that they are "indistinguishable from food that we eat everyday." Critics say the government made a rash decision. Thalia Assuras reports.
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Cloned dairy cows Cyagra, left, and Genesis, right, share hay at the farm of Greg Wiles in Williamsport, Md., on Dec. 13, 2006. (AP Photo/Chris Gardner)
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Interactive Science On The Plate Explore the history of bioengineered food. Find out more about the contentious debate over its safety.
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Interactive Food Pyramid The government's latest guidelines for healthy eating get personal.
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.
With cloning, animals of exceptional quality can be copied without altering the animals' genes, reports CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras. The cloned animal would then be bred and the resulting offspring would then be sold.
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.
Andrew Kimbrell at the Center for Food Safety claims many clones have deformities, and that there's little taste for this.
"The vast majority of Americans do not want to consume meat or dairy products from cloned animals," Kimbrell told CBS News correspondent Barry Bagnato before the announcement.
He points to recent food poisonings.
"This administration has not been paying attention to food safety. So this is like a Katrina on your plate," Kimbrell said.
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.
Still, some clones would eventually end up in the food supply. As with conventional livestock, a cloned bull or cow that outlived its usefulness would probably wind up at a hamburger plant, and a cloned dairy cow would be milked during her breeding years.
That's unlikely to happen soon, because FDA officials have asked farmers and cloning companies since 2001 to voluntarily keep clones and their offspring out of the food supply. The informal ban would remain in place for several months while FDA accepts comments from the public.
Approval of cloned livestock has taken five years because of pressure from big food companies nervous that consumers might reject milk and meat from cloned animals.
To produce a clone, the nucleus of a donor egg is removed and replaced with the DNA of a cow, pig or other animal. A tiny electric shock coaxes the egg to grow into a copy of the original animal. Cloning companies say it's just another reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination, yet there can be differences between the two because of chance and environmental influences.
Some surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with food from cloned animals; 64 percent said they were uncomfortable with such food in a September poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonpartisan research group.
© MMVI The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 38 Comments2.Okay, so let%u2019s say that all the food we eat is dangerous. Does that make it right to add more potentially dangerous food to our tables? (With no labels so we can make our own decision what our children are eating.) So there%u2019s been a five-year study? Who was doing the studying? Someone who would might make profit from the sale of cloned meat? I go back to the fact that if it is the %u201Cuneducated minority%u201D who doesn%u2019t want the cloned meat, the majority will buy and eat it %u2013the minority can choose something different. The majority can choose to be part of the experiment.
3.What happened to %u201CWe the people%u201D. I don%u2019t remember anything saying that we have to be scientists to be part of that group. If %u201Cwe%u201D want a label, shouldn%u2019t %u201Cwe%u201D get a label? Why should we not have a choice? (Because we%u2019re stupid?)
2.Okay, so let%u2019s say that all the food we eat is dangerous. Does that make it right to add more potentially dangerous food to our tables? (With no labels so we can make our own decision what our children are eating.) So there%u2019s been a five-year study? Who was doing the studying? Someone who would might make profit from the sale of cloned meat? I go back to the fact that if it is the %u201Cuneducated minority%u201D who doesn%u2019t want the cloned meat, the majority will buy and eat it %u2013the minority can choose something different. The majority can choose to be part of the experiment.
3.What happened to %u201CWe the people%u201D. I don%u2019t remember anything saying that we have to be scientists to be part of that group. If %u201Cwe%u201D want a label, shouldn%u2019t %u201Cwe%u201D get a label? Why should we not have a choice? (Because we%u2019re stupid?)
Now I just looked at my Cheerios this morning and there certainly is a label on them with all of the yummy ingredients and I don't think they are too dangerous.
How would Corporate America be crippled if they had to add the word "cloned" on the list of ingredients for example? I don't think a "warning" label is at issue at this point, but just disclosure.
I live out in beef country really just a stones throw from real live cows- if I want real beef and even organic beef I know where to buy it so it's not an issue for me personally so much. But really I'll be buying less beef and in the market and eating out-
It's interesting how anyone that wants to know what they are eating is labeled anti-technology and portrayed as ignorant. It's really a sign of not having merits to argue.
Peace Out from Cattle Country.
I'm going to explain it one more time if you still don't follow.
1 Food is labled only if it may be dangerous.
2 Cloned food is not dangerous
3 Dumb people think it is.
4 They think so only because they fear the word "cloned".
If your one of the paranoid freaks, just look for the "not from clone" label. Next to the "organically grown" fruit. Because even fruit grown with massive amounts of pesticides does not have to be labled.
One would label it "cloned" if it was "cloned" not because not "simply because the word scares some people."
If it is such a wonderful product this maybe a great opportunity for marketing. You have to think about the rights of people like your self that may prefer "cloned" products. Shouldn't you have a right to know that your getting genuined cloned cow flesh? Um Um Good.
Just spend a few billion on some slick propaganda and overnight you might get 95% of the tv lobotomized drones you are so afraid of to prefer "cloned" meat- Just turn the media in your favor and the same hypntotising qualities can be used to lead a movement to ban natural animals altogether.
It's like WC Fields said, he never drank water because the little fishies BLANKED in it!
The kind of label that is being considered is one which implies the possibility of danger. And: Do we label something as "cloned" simply because the word scares some people?
Ok now I'm sitting down in the Restaurant drooling for a big slab of animal carcus and I get on my cell phone, after the waiter is kind enough to identify the appropriate company HQ is that a clone 24 hour hot line and I say is the steak they've got here for me cloned or not and the out-sourced illegible voice comes on and says please enter the serial ID number of that paricular hunk of searing flesh and then they can tell me if it's real or if it's memorex?
The last time I checked all kinds of food is labeled that isn't dangerous. *** that Sinclair Lewis- what's the matter with some rats in the canned beef? It won't hurt ya none ya sissy girlieman tree hugger.
Like I think they could clone like rats and hampsters faster than cows and that's like meat so sell that as burger- hey what's the deal if you want to know just call the old company HQ- putting some label on their might scare you when the government has decided its no more dangerous than the rest of what you eat.
Pig eyeballs or other parts probably aren't more dangerous than the other food we eat to put em through the blender and there ya go Pork! Some stupid people what to know what they are eating. Why should business have to label the stuff because then people might not want to eat it.
Also, my statement about the media was not a blanket statement. It's just that when people write things like: "..after the chemicals build up and kill you." Well, where do YOU think that comes from? Definitely not a science book.
I can understand people wanting the right to know, and I'm all for it. You can call the company HQ and find out. But to force a lable and then enforce it causes a lot more problems than it's worth. Not the least of which is that labeling food that IS NOT DANGEROUS causes those labels to lose their credibility.
The FDA can not become an agency which panders to the paranoid uneducated minority.
Consider all the products, meds etc on the market which are no longer on the market which has caused all kinds of sickness. What will they say about these cloned products in about 5 years or so????
I do now want to eat cloned meat or any other product that comes from cloned products.
Don't be so ready to blame what you view as people's views as being the product of being "scared into percieving danger... by the media."
You eat what you want to eat and let the rest of us do the same.
And why should our government consider our opinions? You and the government must have exclusive insight to all forms of truth.
Your views were once expressed by Hermann Muller one of Hitler's Nazi Biologists: "Unless the average man can understand the world that the scientists have discovered... he will fall into the position of an ever less important cog in a vast machine... and the minority that rule over him will eventually find ways of doing without him." And this is an eminent scientist who won a Nobel Prize.
Now I guess it is time for us to shut up and eat what you order us to eat. We get the message. Bye Bye freedom. Hello ....
Peace Out.
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