- A Food and Drug Administration report saying cloned animal
milk and meat are safe is not conclusive, half of the 10-member Veterinary
Medicine Advisory Committee said recently.
-
- The committee met at an FDA public hearing to discuss
the report which stated that such products were safe to consume.
-
- Committee members said that they needed more information
to decide whether consuming cloned animal products was safe.
-
- The hearing also gave consumer groups a chance to comment
on the FDA report.
-
- "The risk assessment (report) is characterized by
a lack of hard data all the way through the presentation," said Carol
Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America
in an interview. "The information on milk is only based on one study."
-
- The agency's 11-page draft report found that milk and
meat from cloned animals was safe to consume based on initial research.
Because cloning is a new technology, researchers had to rely on limited
data from biotechnology companies.
-
- "It's unlikely that any company would give them
data that cloning isn't safe," said Foreman.
-
- Dolly, a sheep, became the first mammal cloned from an
adult cell in 1996. Only a few hundred cloned cattle exist in the United
States, out of around 100 million.
-
- Even though researchers pleaded for more companies to
release their data on cloned animals, they say that available information
establishes that cloned animal food products aren't harmful.
-
- The report compared cloned cows, sheep, pigs and goats
to current FDA standards for their conventional animal counterparts. Problems
with cloned animals mostly occur during pregnancy or birth. But animals
with visible health problems such as deformities weren't studied because
they wouldn't enter the food supply, as with all animals. The ones that
outlast early problems are likely to be healthy.
-
- "Food derived from animal clones is likely to be
as safe as food we eat every day," said Dr. Larisa Rudenko, senior
adviser for risk analysis at the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine.
Even though they studied a small group of animals, about 200, the consistency
of the information shows that these products are safe, she said. The research
group performed medical tests on the animals, mostly cattle, but did not
study the meat itself.
-
- And because cloned animals cost about $20,000 and are
valuable for research, they won't reach supermarket shelves, said Rudenko.
But their milk and offspring might one day.
-
- However, consumers still worry about the safety of scientifically
tampering with food. Fifty-five percent of Americans would avoid buying
genetically modified food if it were labeled, according to a July ABC News
survey. Consumers are willing to pay up to $1.50 more for milk labeled
free of artificial growth hormones and $3 more for organic milk, according
to a study by the Food Research Group.
-
- "We just want to make sure that this has been thoroughly
studied so that consumers can be sure that these products are 100 percent
safe and wholesome," said Susan Ruland, a spokesperson for the International
Dairy Foods Association.
-
- In June 2001, the FDA asked that milk and meat from cloned
animals be kept off grocery store shelves so it could further study the
risks. The report marks the FDA's first stamp of approval for those products.
The agency plans to release a full report in spring.
-
- Still, Foreman worries that the research on cloned animal
products has not been well thought out.
-
- "No one has suggested that there is any great public
benefit from cloning animals," she said. "We are being pushed
into this so one Texas cowboy can boast his longhorn steer is bigger down
the road."
-
- Copyright © 2003 , World Publishing Co. All rights
reserved.
-
- http://www.tulsaworld.com/HealthStory.asp?ID=031226_He_EDHcloned7_1
|
