With the advent of cloned livestock, yet another biotech science experiment may soon find its way to the American dinner table. In January 2008, the FDA essentially told the public that the meat and milk from cloned livestock are safe for human consumption. FDA’s action flies in the face of widespread scientific concern about the risks of food from clones, and ignores the animal cruelty and troubling ethical concerns that the cloning process brings. The approval also goes against the will of Congress, who voted twice in 2007 to delay FDA’s decision on cloned animals until additional safety and economic studies can be completed, and ignores the feelings of the American public, 150,000 of whom wrote to FDA opposing the approval during last year’s public comment period. What’s worse, FDA will not require labeling on cloned food, so consumers will have no way to avoid these experimental foods.
Animal cloning is a new technology with potentially severe risks for food safety. Defects in clones are common, and cloning scientists warn that even small imbalances in clones could lead to hidden food safety problems in clones’ milk or meat. There are few studies on the risks of food from clones, and no long-term food safety studies have been done. Numerous opinion polls show that the majority of Americans do not want food from animal clones and are opposed to cloning on moral or ethical grounds.
The FDA’s veterinary medicine advisory panel rebuked the agency in 2003 for its position, declaring that not enough research has been done to determine whether food derived from cloned animals is safe. In fact, livestock cloning raises numerous health and ethical concerns. Over 90 percent of cloning attempts fail, and cloned animals that are born have more health problems and higher mortality rates than sexually reproduced animals.
Given that researchers do not understand many of the health problems that arise throughout the lifecycles of cloned animals, the FDA acted irresponsibly in assuming that the foods produced from these animals are safe for humans to eat. According to Ian Wilmut, the leader of the team of scientists that cloned the sheep Dolly, determining the health impacts of food derived from clones must be based on the animals’ complete health profiles. Such studies have not been done.
The Center for Food Safety has called on FDA to ban the use of clones in food production until the food safety and animal cruelty problems in cloning have been resolved, and until public discussions have addressed the troubling ethical issues that cloning brings. We also call on FDA, in the event that these pre-conditions can be met, to require labeling of food from animal clones.
CLONING PRESS AND POLICY COMMENTS:
Read our report Not Ready for Prime Time: FDA’s Flawed Approach to Assessing the Safety of Food from Animal Clones
DOWNLOADS AND RESOURCES
Take Action! Tell food companies and retailers that you will not buy food from cloned animals or their offspring, and ask them to pledge to avoid such products in their foods
View or download our Factsheet on cloned meat and dairy
View our CFS Policy Comments on Animal Cloning
I think it’s horrible and disgusting that these food companies will do practically anything to make more money. It’s like that’s all that they care about! They don’t care about the animals’ safety and well being, or humans’ safety and well being. I think they would be a lot more popular if they were honest, and tried to make food safer, and not only care about their own economic wellbeing. They wouldn’t make as much money, but I think everyone would appreciate all their extra work. People need to learn to care about others, and not just themselves.
It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to clone even one animal. The success rate is 9000 to 1 that a viable clone would result from a cloning experiment. Cloning for the sake of making a profit is ridiculous, to say the least. Cloning isn’t and will most likely never be a financially feasible form of livestock creation for the mere simple fact that it costs more money to make one animal than it would to buy, raise, and breed already living animals. Whether or not the milk or meat from an animal is approved for human consumption by the FDA is a moot point, because food companies care about money, and it’s cheaper to have real live animals than to make them.
Fish is an international staple meat. I would press governments of the world to fund research and development to create a safe and ecological way to clone and harvest safe fish to eat. I do not say this without the animals in mind. There should be steps taken an inspection placed upon clone fisheries that grow fish strictly for food purposes. This would ease the over-fishing of our current ocean’s fisheries and allow them to re-populate to a sustainable level. Afterward, place strict restrictions on the fisheries catching quota to keep a maintained fish population healthy for the aquatic ecosystem and the needs of wild raised fish to reproduce. Like organic grown plants in our produce section we will have wild fish and cloned fish to choose from. Both should have quality insured and safety for both man and beast in mind.
We will not run out of food on this Earth as long as we abide by the laws of Mother Nature. GMO’s, agri-chemicals and cloning will be man’s downfall…not overpopulation. The people behind these “technologies” need to make amends for the damages they have created in our eco-system and they need to stop messing around with further “experiments” that endanger life on Earth. A mother’s breast works by supply and demand…so will Mother Nature if we take care to respect her. For thousands of years the she has provided all our needs for food, water, air, natural medicine…Don’t let greedy industries or governments or “science” convince you otherwise. Grow your own garden. Nurture your animals. We will not go hungry, in fact, Mother Nature always gives us a little extra to share with our neighbor.