FDA's OK may spark clone-free labels
(AP)Updated: 2006-12-29 10:16
Given the public's overwhelming discomfort over this issue, Congress also should consider whether disclosure and labeling requirements are appropriate for products from cloned animals."
"When they deny us mandatory labels, they don't just deny us the right to choose," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety.
"They also deny our health professionals the ability to trace potential toxic or allergic reactions to this food," Kimbrell said. "It's bad enough they're making us guinea pigs. But when we have health effects, we won't be able to trace it."
In Congress, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (news, bio, voting record), a Connecticut Democrat who heads a key agriculture spending subcommittee, said lawmakers should consider whether disclosure and labeling are appropriate for food from clones.
Jim Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said labeling meat from a clone would be as absurd as telling consumers that a steak was produced through artificial insemination, or by cows actually mating.
"None of that information would be useful to consumers," Greenwood said.
Federal scientists studied reams of data on the composition of meat and milk from clones and those of conventionally bred animals.
"You can't tell them apart," said L. Val Giddings, a vice president of BIO and a former Agriculture Department geneticist. "There is not an analytical, scientific test you can use to tell one from another. You just can't do it."
The cloning industry says the technology is latest in a series of reproductive tools for farmers and ranchers to help deliver the food consumers want. 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 the technology would be used primarily for breeding and not for steak or pork tenderloin. Thus, consumers would mostly get food from their offspring and not from the clones themselves.
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.
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