FDA Expected to Rule on Cloned Food This Week

[NashVegas]

from ABC news:

Dec. 27, 2006 — The Food and Drug Administration is expected to make an important ruling this week on the future of meat and milk from cloned animals.
...
In what is seen as a preview of an FDA ruling expected this week, FDA scientists say in a new study that they have found that food from cloned animals is safe to eat.

"Meat and milk from clones and their progeny is as safe to eat" as food that isn't produced through cloning, the report said.

Regardless of the FDA's decision, it's not expected to quell the controversy over cloned foods.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=2753527

Now, here's how it looks in alternative media:

FDA Expected to OK Food from Cloned Animals

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected later this week to release a preliminary safety assessment that clears the way for marketing of meat and dairy products from cloned animals for human consumption. The assessment and the agency’s expected endorsement of cloned food comes despite widespread concern among scientists and food safety advocates over the safety of such products. The move to market cloned milk and meat also flies in the face of dairy and food industry concern and recent consumer opinion polls showing that most Americans do not want these experimental foods.

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The FDA action follows the recent news that the agency has refused to investigate health problems in animal clones on a U.S. dairy farm. Greg Wiles, whose Williamsport Maryland "Futuraland 2020" dairy was the first farm in the nation to have cloned cows, told FDA that one of his two cow clones was suffering from unexplained health problems. Wiles told Food Chemical News that the clone "just stopped growing...she just looks terrible," but says that when he reported the problems to FDA and other federal officials, he was "paddled around like a tennis ball from agency to agency." CFS has asked the Agriculture Department to intervene in the case to stop any sale and prohibit the slaughter of clones and their progeny for food.

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Cloning scientists have acknowledged that genetic abnormalities are common in clones, yet FDA failed to address how food safety and animal welfare concerns could be managed if cloning is widely adopted by the livestock industry. Some of the health and safety problems in animal cloning include:

Surrogate mothers are treated with high doses of hormones; clones are often born with severely compromised immune systems and frequently receive massive doses of antibiotics. This opens an avenue for large amounts of veterinary pharmaceuticals to enter the human food supply;

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/26/18341099.php

Oh and by the way, this is what the study's authors say about food labeling:

The FDA scientists who wrote the paper, Larisa Rudenko and John C. Matheson, concluded there was no basis for labeling the meat and milk products or for treating them differently than other food.

"The U.S. food safety system is designed to screen meat and milk for hazards, regardless of the means by which the animals were derived," they wrote. "There is no science-based reason to apply additional safeguards."

The paper relies on dozens of studies from around the world, many of which examined genetic and health problems in cloned animals and the risks to animals that birth clones.

Though clones are more likely to die in utero or shortly after birth and to have birth defects, animals that are healthy and make it to adolescence face "no additional risk of illness or death," according to the report.

Two of the largest studies were provided by commercial clone producers Cyagra Inc. and ViaGen Inc.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-clones23dec23,0,6226310,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines