Safety of cloned food goes under microscope

By Dan Vergano
USA Today

At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, academics, food industry representatives and public interest groups will begin discussions next week on whether meat, eggs and other foods from cloned animals are safe for consumers.

A National Research Council meeting, beginning Tuesday in Washington, will examine "science-based" safety issues surrounding animal biotechnology. Concerns range from worries about genetically engineered insects overwhelming native bugs to safety of milk from cloned cows.

"Animal biotechnology science is ramping up quite rapidly," says Kim Waddell of the council. "A lot of the products we'll be discussing weren't even imagined a few years ago." Under a congressional charter, the council advises the public on science matters.

Since 1997, when Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at Scotland's Roslin Institute announced the creation of Dolly, the first cloned sheep, scientists have predicted that cloned animals would eventually appear on the farm and the dinner plate, as well as help out in biomedical research.

Currently, the FDA asks companies that have cloned animals not to introduce the animals, their offspring, milk or eggs into either human or animal food supplies. In July, the agency requested that companies involved in cloning supply "scientific information they have collected on the safety of cloned animals" to the NRC.

At Tuesday's public workshop, researchers plan to discuss the status of animal cloning and discuss areas that would benefit from better regulation. Some concern surrounds issues of animal welfare, particularly genetic abnormalities in cloned animals and high rates of failed pregnancies involving clones. Others worry whether meat from cloned animals somehow poses a threat to human health.

One participant in next week's workshop, biotechnology ethicist Paul Thompson of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., says animal cloning will remain experimental for the foreseeable future. "We shouldn't rule out the eventual ethical acceptability of animal cloning based on our current state of knowledge, but neither are we in a position to even think about blanket approval," he says.