Milk from cloned cows and meat from cloned cattle and pigs
could show up on grocery shelves as early as next year.
According to a recent report from the National Academy of
Sciences, cloning is becoming a routine part of U.S.
agricultural production and livestock breeders are already
raising clones on farms.
A NAS panel has reviewed developments in animal cloning
and is worried about genetic manipulation of fish and insects
that might escape and harm wild species. However, it finds
the cloning of farm animals to be no problem, since the
technique involves copying adult animals without altering
their genes. The committee says cloning is unlikely to affect
the safety of the food supply. "I think our message was fairly
loud and clear," says panel member Eric Hallerman, of
Virginia Polytechnic Institute. "The concern about food
safety, we thought, was just way overblown."
A few cloned cows scattered around the country are already
producing milk, although farmers and companies are not
selling it yet. They?ve been asked to wait by the FDA, which
is reviewing whether clones, their byproducts or their
offspring, should be allowed into the food supply. The agency
will make a decision by late this year. If there is no
compelling evidence of a problem, the FDA or any other
government agency won?t have the legal power to keep
cloned animals out of the food supply.
Some groups say cloning on a large scale will lead to
widespread animal suffering. Though clones that survive to
adulthood seem healthy, they die in large numbers in the
womb or just after birth, and the pregnancies appear to be
stressful for the surrogate mothers. Also, many clones are
born with genetic defects. The number of cloned animals
living on American farms today is fewer than 100. All are
animals that cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce and
are valued as breeding stock, not as meat.
For that reason, products made from clones won?t get to the
marketplace soon. But if cloning becomes established and
the price of cloning falls, entire dairy herds may be stocked
with nothing but clones of the best cows. Cloning may never
be cheap enough to produce animals for use directly as
meat, but it's likely the offspring of clones will wind up in the
meat supply in large numbers.
Cloned food could be on grocery store shelves next year. By
this spring, farmers around the country will face the choice
of selling milk from their clones or dumping it back on their
fields. If the FDA will let them, they plan to sell it. Beef and
Pork won?t be far behind, with some first-generation
offspring cows and pigs being butchered for food in 2004 or
2005. Other countries are moving in the same direction. A
study published recently in Japan says cloned meat and milk
are identical to the ordinary kind. Japan is now preparing to
lift a cloning ban.
Cloned animals, made with the same technique that was
used to produce Dolly the sheep in 1996, are close genetic
copies of their adult progenitors, so eating them shouldn't be
any different from dining on the original. But research shows
that cloning alters some genetic patterns, at least slightly,
and there's a possibility that this could affect their meat or
milk. Scientists says the offspring being produced right now
pose no risk because they are the product of natural sexual
crosses. "The offspring of clones we're not concerned about
at all," says an expert from Virginia Tech. "That's just a
normal animal."
A year ago Joe Fisher was getting ready to have his
champion pig 401-K cloned when the animal died suddenly
of an intestinal blockage. The boar had been dead several
hours by the time Fisher managed to salvage ear cells and
ship them off to Infigen, one of a handful of companies
offering cloning services to breeders. "It was like a bad
Woody Allen movie, the way we were running around here,"
Fisher says. But he now has six clones of 401-K and one of
The Man, another champion boar. "They look like a pig. They
smell like a pig. They feel like a pig," Fisher says. "It's a pig."
One concern is that breeders may attempt genetic
modification of their animals, to make them leaner or
improve milk production. Such genetic manipulation poses
far more potential problems than just cloning them, and the
FDA would require extensive proof that the gene-altered
animals are safe to eat. The FDA?s Stephen Sundlof
says, "Once you get into the cloning technology, it's very
tempting to want to manipulate a few genes here and there,
too."
How can we tell what we?re eating? Find out from ?Eating in
the Dark? by Kathleen Hart,
click here.
For more information, click here.
