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WASHINGTON —(AP)— Meat or milk derived from healthy cloned farm animals appears safe to eat, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last week in its first attempt at assessing questions about the emerging technology. That doesn't mean Americans will be eating cloned meat any time soon, if ever. The agency wants public reaction to its assessment before it decides if cloned farm animals will require government approval before being sold as food, a decision expected to take another year. The still fledgling industry — there are at most a few hundred cloned farm animals alive — has voluntarily agreed for the last several years not to allow any products from cloned animals into the food supply. ``We're not allowing cloned animals to enter the food chain at this point,'' FDA Deputy Commissioner Lester Crawford stressed Friday as the agency posted a summary of its preliminary findings on its website. ``That decision has not been made. The moratorium remains in effect.'' The agency last year asked the prestigious National Research Council to study foods made from cloned animals. The council, an independent group that advises the government on scientific issues, concluded that cloned meat and other products seem safe. The FDA will look two issues: Are the animals themselves healthy, and are the products nutritionally indistinguishable from those produced by noncloned animals? By its very definition, a successfully cloned animal should be no different from the original animal whose DNA was used to create it. But the technology hasn't been perfected, meaning many attempts end in birth defects. The FDA acknowledged concern about the animals' welfare in its review: ``The frequency of live normal births appears to be low, although the situation appears to be improving as the technology matures.'' Still, cloning-related birth defects aren't that different from problems seen in the early days of other assisted reproduction techniques in farming, the FDA says. When it comes to animals that are born healthy, there are some differences between the cloned and noncloned at young ages. ``But as the animal matures, they become indistinguishable,'' said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, FDA's veterinary medicine chief. If it concludes cloned food products are safe, the FDA then must decide if cloning is just another form of assisted reproduction on the farm — which it doesn't regulate — or if each product will require specific approval before selling. Although preliminary, the FDA's findings are causing consternation for some consumer activists. How, critics wonder, can anyone be confident of the FDA's review of such an important matter on the basis of 11 pages of vague information? FDA's full 300-page review, containing scientific data, will be released to the public as soon as it's finished, possibly by year's end, Crawford said. In addition, the FDA hasn't yet considered societal reaction and ethical concerns to using cloned animals for food, something the National Research Council specifically urged addressing, said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America. |
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