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CASH COW?: Some American farmers hope to turn cloning into a routine agricultural tool. -- PHOTO: AP
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WASHINGTON - CONSUMERS in the United States have received a plateful of mixed messages as the US food safety authority declared food from cloned animals and their offspring to be safe, while farmers were told by the Agriculture Department to keep such animals off the market.
The ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was the latest twist after years of debate over the reproductive technology, which advocates say will provide consumers with top-quality food by replicating prized animals that can breed highly productive offspring.
Mr Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Centre for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, who oversaw a six-year review of the safety of food from clones and their offspring, said: 'Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day.'
The FDA said that it did not have enough facts to make an assertion about cloned sheep.
In a controversial move, the agency also said that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring would not be labelled because it was the same as conventional food and did not pose a safety risk, despite a programme launched by US biotechnology firms last month to track cloned cattle and pigs.
Awkwardly meshed announcements by the FDA and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials, made at a joint news conference on Tuesday, reflected continuing divisions among US food-related agencies on how to deal with the cloned-food issue.
Farmers have long held back from selling cloned foods, and on Tuesday, USDA said this state of affairs should continue, pending consultations on introducing these foods into the market.
'USDA is encouraging the technology producers to maintain their voluntary moratorium on sending milk and meat from animal clones into the food supply,' USDA official Bruce Knight told reporters.
But the FDA decision to let cloned products into the food chain was hailed by cloning companies and some farmers, who hope to turn cloning into a routine agricultural tool.
As clones are costly, they will be used primarily for breeding, not for producing meat and milk.
But some US consumer groups suggested that the American public would be as tough a sell as the 'Frankenfood'-averse consumers in the European Union and Japan.
A September 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64 per cent of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning. FDA focus groups found that a third of consumers would never eat food from cloned animals.
A number of US groups have also demanded that food from clones be labelled as such, so that consumers can exercise a 'right to choose'.
Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, who is among a group of lawmakers pushing for a delay on the cloned-food issue until further studies are completed, accused the FDA of acting 'recklessly' on Tuesday.
'If we discover a problem with cloned food after it is in our food supply and it's not labelled, the FDA won't be able to recall it...the food will already be tainted,' she said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST
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