- TOKYO - Japan's largest consumer group on Thursday called on the government
to explain the safety of beef from cloned cows after the Agriculture Ministry
said the meat had been sold for four years in part of Japan.
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- The Agriculture Ministry said the beef
had been sold in Nara prefecture, central Japan.
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- The news followed a report in Wednesday's
Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily that cloned cows bred in livestock
research institutions had been shipped to market and that the public may
have consumed the beef without knowing.
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- "The ministry has the responsibility
to explain in detail to consumers why these products are safe. The consumer
should then be able to choose whether they want to accept the product or
not," said Shuichi Watanabe, safety policy service manager at the
Japanese Consumers' Cooperative Union.
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- "The problem is everything is over
by the time the consumer finds out (about the consequences)," said
Watanabe.
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- An Agricultural Ministry official said
the beef was safe to eat and the ministry had no intention of removing
the cloned beef from the market, though it was investigating how many cloned
cows had been shipped and to where.
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- The official played down concern over
the cloned cows, arguing the process involved splitting fertilized eggs
rather than altering genes.
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- "There is no genetic engineering
involved in this process. It is the same thing as having twins and triplets
under natural circumstances, so I don't know why it has become such a big
deal," the official at the ministry's Livestock Industry Bureau said.
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- He said its sale was not announced because
routine testing showed the meat was safe and had no irregular traits.
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- He added there was no merit in labeling
cloned beef as DNA testing would show cloned beef was identical to naturally
bred beef.
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- "If the meat were genetically engineered,
then DNA testing would prove it is different from natural genes. But there
is no way to prove it is cloned beef even if it carries a label that says
so," he said.
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- A Health Ministry official said the technology
is used worldwide and beef derived from the method has been eaten for some
time in other countries.
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- The technology is different from the
nuclear transfer method used to clone Dolly the sheep in Britain last year,
the official said.
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- The Agriculture Ministry said 370 calves
were born between 1990 and 1998 using the fertilised egg-based cloning
process.
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