FDA declares cloned food safe for human consumption

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday gave green signal to the use of cloned food, saying meat and milk from most cloned animals are as safe as that from their counterparts bred the traditional way.

After years of study, the American health agency yesterday released the long-awaited final report, suggesting there is no safety risk in meat from healthy cloned cows, pigs or goats or milk from cloned cows and their offspring, and such food is safe for human consumption.

"Food products derived from cattle, swine, and goat clones pose no more risk than food derived from sexually reproduced animals," the 968-page "final risk assessment" report said.

FDA’s decision comes more than four years after the agency tentatively declared that food from cloned animals was safe. In December 2006, the federal scientists, Larisa Rudenko and John C. Matheson again declared the meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring safe for human consumption. They had suggested at the time that there was no basis to differentiate the food products from the cloned animals from normal animals.

Cloning is a process in which the nucleus of the donor egg is removed and the DNA of the cow or sheep or pig takes that position. An electric shock induced would help the egg to grow into a cloned animal. The cloning industry says that the food products would be made from the offspring of the cloned animals, and not the cloned animals themselves.

Despite receiving FDA’s OK, the cloned products may not hit the U.S. market for years. The major reason is foods from cloned animals are much more expensive than ordinary cows, at $10,000 to $20,000 per animal.

In addition, some major food producers, including the largest U.S. meat processor Tyson Foods Inc. and Dallas-based Dean Foods Co., the biggest dairy distributor, said they won't use cloned foods anytime soon because of consumer anxiety about the technology.

“It will likely be a long time before such animals would even be available for market,” said Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson in an e-mail today. “Whatever measures we ultimately take will be guided by government regulations and the desires of our customers and consumers.”

However, the two major U.S. cloning companies, ViaGen Inc. of Austin, Texas and Trans Ova Genetics of Sioux Center, Iowa, already have produced an estimated 650 live clones for U.S. breeders, including copies of prize-winning cows and rodeo bulls.