ViaGen Preserving and Multiplying Superior Genetics

Responding to concerns in the food industry, companies developing cloned livestock have come up with a system to track the animals as they move through farms and slaughterhouses.

The system, which will be announced Wednesday, would make it easier for food companies or retailers to support claims that their products contain no meat or milk from cloned animals.

The program comes as the Food and Drug Administration is thought to be preparing to lift a voluntary moratorium that has kept milk and meat from cloned cows, pigs and goats out of the food supply.

The agency issued a draft report last year declaring that the milk and meat from cloned animals and their conventionally bred offspring were safe to eat. Agency officials said then that they would make a final decision after analyzing public comments, possibly by the end of 2007.

Some lawmakers, however, are trying to introduce legislation that would either force or urge the F.D.A. to delay its action until more study is done. The Senate version of the farm bill contains an amendment to that effect introduced by Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania.

The meat and dairy industries have expressed concerns that consumers might shun food from cloned animals, despite the F.D.A.’s assurances. Some public opinion surveys have found that many people are morally opposed to cloned animals, not just concerned about safety. So some food companies and retailers have been interested in a way to show that their food is free of products from clones.

The tracking system is being announced by ViaGen and Trans Ova Genetics, two companies that account for most cloned livestock. The companies said they developed the plan over a 10-month period in consultation with the food industry.

Under the system, the companies would give each cloned animal an electronic ear tag with an identification number, which would be entered into a registry.

Farmers and breeders who buy the clones would be asked to put up a hefty cash deposit in addition to what they pay for the animal. The farmers and breeders would also commit to marketing the milk or meat only to those who want it. The farmers would be able to get their deposit back by proving that the animal either died or was sold to a meat packer or processor that accepts clones, with a signed statement from the packer or processor.

Leah Wilkinson, director for policy and industry relations for ViaGen, said that since cloned animals were expensive to produce, they would mostly be used for breeding other animals, not to make meat or milk.

”What we’re doing is allowing for those small number of animals to be segregated out from the food supply,” she said.

But Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group, said the system gave consumers ”phony assurances.” He said animals would slip through because the system was voluntary and did not cover the progeny of cloned animals.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents major food companies, said in a statement released by the cloning companies that ”a rigorous clone segregation program is needed if this breeding technology is introduced.”

The group said the program ”addresses this need from a supply chain management standpoint,” but it added that, ”ultimately, consumer preferences will determine if meat, milk and other byproducts from cloned animals will be used in food products.”

As FDA prepares a final rule on safety of food from animal clones and their offspring, the benefits for people around the world are becoming clear.

THE benefits that will be gained in animal cloning technology stretch across all kinds of production — from conventional to natural and organic — and around the world from Nebraska to Africa to China, according to a number of sources familiar with and involved in the technology.

As previously reported, cloning will allow producers to “copy” their best-performing livestock to improve the consistency and productivity of their herds, to insure against unexpected injuries and losses through multiplication or preservation strategies, to select for disease and pest resistance and hardiness and vigor and to improve the consistency and quality of meat and milk from their animals (Feedstuffs FoodLink, May 14 and 21).

Cloning will allow producers to extend lines and will allow scientists to preserve species.

Third in a series

These are especially important opportunities in developing and transitioning countries, according to Calestous Juma, who teaches international development ay Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and Leah Wilkinson, director of industry relations and policy at ViaGen, leading specialist in animal cloning based in Austin, Texas.

In Africa, for instance, cloning can produce cattle that are not only bigger and more productive to increase food production for the continent but vigorous enough to resist fevers and insects, Juma said in a BBC News Viewpoint published earlier this year.

More productive and stronger cattle would also mean that fewer cattle could produce more food, reducing the ecological impact of cattle grazing, he said.

This would also be important for human health, nourishment and well-being, Wilkinson added during a Feedstuffs interview with her and other ViaGen executives last month.

Eager and open

ViaGen is eager to talk about these benefits, president Dr. Mark Walton said.

First, ViaGen and Cyagra, a company that’s also involved in animal cloning, maintain a web site at www.clonesafety.org that explains the cloning process and provides answers to common questions about the technology.

Second, “we do outreach,” Walton said, noting that the company is ready to make presentations to producer and consumer groups and welcomes people who want to come to ViaGen to talk and tour the laboratories there. “We are open and transparent, … and we continue to look for ways to do this,” he said.

He said it’s his experience that when he talks about applications of cloning technology, more hands go up in support of the technology at the end of his presentation than went up at the beginning.

There are animal and consumer activists who are opposed to cloning, but the technology also is well supported in the scientific community. Comments from both sides are currently in review at the Food & Drug Administration, which issued a draft risk assessment and preliminary rule last December that meat and milk from animal clones and their offspring are safe for human consumption (Feedstuffs, Jan. 1) and took public comment through May 3.

The Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit public interest group, formed a coalition of consumer, animal welfare and environmental groups and submitted more than 130,000 comments opposed to FDA’s rule. Others opposed to the rule include the Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, Food & Water Watch, Humane Society of the United States and Organic Consumers Assn.

However, more than 200 scientists signed a letter carried by the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS) in support of the rule, including Dr. Terry Etherton, chair of the department of animal and dairy science at Penn State University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that evaluated the safety of meat and milk from clones and their offspring.

FASS chief executive officer Dr. Jerome Baker said FDA’s study behind the rule was “one of the most rigorous food safety studies ever conducted. The American people should be absolutely confident in FDA’s good work.”

FDA is not expected to issue its final rule until late this year.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Part four of this series will cover commonly asked questions on cloning.)

Here’s the point

CLONING will benefit all kinds of producers all over the world, including conventional producers, of course, but also natural and organic producers who can benefit from an expanded influence of genetics that are high in health and productivity and support antibiotic- and hormone-free production systems as well as environmental and local sustainability, according to cloning specialists who have talked with Feedstuffs.

Cloning will especially help producers in developing areas of the world where herds need to be stronger to resist disease and insects and improve food sustainability, and its environmental footprint will be less intrusive on sensitive ecosystems, according to sources who are working to help developing nations.

To these ends, cloning will benefit people everywhere.

Cloning has wide scientific support. Indeed, the Federation of Animal Science Societies ran an advertisement in the May 2 Washington Post in which Dr. Terry Etherton said “the scientific evidence is absolutely, robustly clear” that meat and milk from clones and their offspring are safe to consume and that cloning will benefit people.

These are important messages for agriculture, suppliers and customers to take to consumers through communications outreaches and by referring them to www.FeedstuffsFoodLink.com.

he benefits of cloning will be easily recognized by producers and will be felt across the food system all the way to consumers.

ONCE the Food & Drug Administration issues its final rule that meat and milk from animal clones and their offspring are safe for human consumption, livestock producers are expected to adopt cloning technology to increase the influence of their best-performing animals.

Cloning is “a highly intuitive value proposition” to livestock producers “that they can quickly wrap their minds around,” noted Blake Russell, vice president for business development and sales at ViaGen, the leading specialist in the technology.

Producers will grasp this proposition when they identify those animals that have exceptional genetic value and see cloning as a means to multiply that value very effectively without taking the chance and time required for natural breeding, added company president Dr. Mark Walton.

The benefits will be felt all the way “down the line” from farm to table, he said.

Russell, Walton and director of industry relations and policy Leah Wilkinson talked with Feedstuffs during an interview at ViaGen’s headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Second in a series

Cloning is a form of assisted reproduction that can be traced to Arab chieftains who began using artificial insemination in 1332 to breed superior horses, and cloning itself has been discussed for more than 100 years since U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Herbert Webber coined the word “clon” to describe asexually produced cell or organism copies.

Scientists first cloned frogs in 1952, and scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland produced “Dolly” the sheep in 1996, the first mammal cloned from a cell of an adult animal. A number of other cloning successes followed, including clones of endangered species.

Last year, after more than five years of study — the most exhaustive food safety study it has ever done — FDA concluded and issued a preliminary rule that meat and milk from clones and offspring are safe (Feedstuffs, Jan. 1). The agency took comments on the rule until May 3 and is expected to issue its final rule later this year.

Cloning benefits

It’s expected that all kinds and sizes of producers will clone livestock, but early on, seedstock producers will be especially involved, Walton said.

Producers will identify their animals — females and males — whose genetic impact is highly regarded and clone them for a number of reasons, he said. By having multiple “copies,” or “identical twins,” of a top-performing dam, for instance, a producer not only could increase the number of offspring from the cow but could mate her twins to multiple sires at the same time to quickly find the “magical mating” that produces the next generation of exceptional genetics.

By having additional copies of a top-performing sire, a producer could ensure that he or she has a semen supply sufficient to meet demand and could expand business opportunities in natural-service sires.

By cloning, producers could quickly improve the consistency and quality of their herds and the consistency and quality of the meat and milk from their commercial herds.

Accordingly, producers could quickly expand the number of top-performing animals in their herds and, therefore, their marketing opportunities, Walton said.

Other reasons to clone include preserving the genes of one’s top-performing animals as insurance against unexpected injuries or losses and selecting for disease and insect resistance. The latter possibility is important for countries where disease and pests keep producers from building high-quality, large herds to improve food sufficiency, Wilkinson said.

These benefits would apply across all livestock, including beef, dairy and exotic cattle, swine, horses and rodeo and show animals, Walton said.

Cloning “can disseminate desired genetics very quickly,” he said.

Cloning time to market

Specifically for beef and dairy cattle and swine, Walton said producers would have animals that consistently grade at levels that pay premiums, packers and processors would have meat and dairy products consistently high in quality and restaurants and retail stores would be able to consistently feature and merchandise meat and dairy products with the quality and value traits consumers demand.

Cloning can drive value across the food system, he said, noting that the application of cloning technology is not about “more” but about “better” — better breeding animals, better commercial animals and better food.

However, “better” is not right around the corner, he said. Assuming that the FDA process will not be concluded until the end of the year and using cattle as an example, he explained first that the cloning process is expensive — $15,000 for the first bovine, with additional copies at incrementally lower rates — and producers will channel clones into their breeding herds rather than commercial herds.

In this scenario, then, producers would order clones of desired animals next January, and ViaGen would get the bovine pregnancies underway in February (clones are carried to term in surrogate mothers). There would be a standard nine-month gestation period, after which the calves would be kept on ViaGen-leased ranches for 30 days to seven months before being delivered to their owners.

The calves then would need to be raised to sexual maturity and bred — conventionally — after which they will need to carry to term and give birth, and now the newly born calves would need at least one year to be grown to harvest weight.

Accordingly, the first beef from the cloning process that would begin early in 2008 would not be available in the meat case until 2011 0r 2012, he said, emphasizing that it would be beef from conventionally bred cattle and not from clones (Feedstuffs FoodLink, May 14).

The math would be shorter but arrived at similarly for swine, he said. (The first copy of a porcine animal, for which cloning is better documented and more straightforward, is priced at $5,000, and the first copy of an equine animal, for which cloning is documented less, is priced at $150,000.)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Part three in this series will focus on the cloning process and its environmental footprint.)

Here’s the point

A NEW technology — cloning — will effectively and efficiently improve the American food supply once the Food & Drug Administration issues its final rule on the safety of meat and milk from animal clones and their offspring.

That rule will come from the agency’s most comprehensive food safety study in its history — a five-year review of approximately 400 scientific reports, an analysis of the health records of meat and milk from clones and their progeny and public comments. FDA, in its preliminary rule, determined that there are no differences in food from conventionally bred animals and clones. It is healthful, nutritious and safe.

Besides, with one exception, clones will not be harvested for meat and milk because clones will be channeled into breeding herds and bred conventionally, and it’s the food from those conventionally bred animals that will be marketed.

The one exception is when a clone is past its reproductive life, but cloning companies already have established safeguards to prevent any harvested product from entering the food supply at restaurants or retail stores where there are concerns.

The benefits that will come from this new technology are enormous and will stretch all the way from producers to consumers, according to the top people at cloning company ViaGen, who were interviewed for this series.

Producers will be able to “copy” their best animals and, by doing so, improve the consistency of their herds, increase marketing opportunities and raise animals that will capture premiums; processors will be able to harvest and process high-quality food with the traits consumers want, and restaurants and supermarkets will be able to offer that food to consumers, the ViaGen people said. Consumers will have “better” food, according to ViaGen president Dr. Mark Walton.

These are important messages livestock producers and processors and foodservice and supermarket managers need to share with consumers in their engagements and by referring them to www.FeedstuffsFoodLink.com.

Cloning is a new reproductive technology that will benefit livestock producers and consumers, and meat and milk produced through this technology are safe and wholesome.

CLONING is an important technology that will improve the food chain from farm to fork.

It’s a technology that will allow producers to multiply and preserve the value of their best-performing genetics. It’s a technology that will allow producers to provide “better” meat and milk with the quality traits consumers want.

It’s a technology that will be positive for the environment, animal health and even human well-being.

It’s a new tool for producers. Certainly, it’s another form of “assisted reproductive technology” like artificial insemination and embryo transfer, but it’s new because it provides faster and more promising results.

“It’s another reproductive tool, but it’s a powerful tool,” said Blake Russell, vice president for business development and sales at ViaGen, the leading specialist in cloning technology in the U.S.

First in a series

Russell, ViaGen president Dr. Mark Walton and director of industry relations and policy Leah Wilkinson met with Feedstuffs last month at their offices in Austin, Texas, to talk about cloning as the Food & Drug Administration moves closer to a final rule that will find meat and milk from animals produced from the technology to be safe.

The wording is important. First, cloning is an accepted and proven reproductive tool, and some superior-performing cattle, swine and horses already have been cloned — from Forever Lady, a prized Angus cow, to the champion gelding Scamper.

Second, animal clones will not be produced to harvest meat or milk but, rather, to be conventionally bred for superior offspring. It is the meat and milk from those conventionally bred animals that will be marketed through the food chain.

Third, FDA’s responsibility is to determine the safety of the meat and milk. The agency released a draft risk assessment from its Center for Veterinary Medicine last year in which the center found meat and milk from animal clones or their offspring to be indistinguishable from other meat and milk and safe to consume (Feedstuffs, Jan. 1).

FDA’s risk assessment was an exhaustive, fully disclosed, peer-reviewed, five-year review of more than 400 scientific journal articles, as well as an analysis of the health records and meat and milk from animal clones and their offspring. The preliminary report was more than 800 pages long.

FDA’s risk assessment was the largest food safety study ever conducted, according to Walton.

FDA received comments on its report through May 3 and will issue a final rule after reviewing the comments.

One clarification needs to be made to this scenario. The application of cloning technology is very expensive — $15,000 for the first copy of a bovine — which means that only the champion of champions — the top performer of top performers — will be cloned. In the case of beef and dairy cattle, goats and swine, clones will be produced to be bred conventionally to produce animals for commercial herds.

It will only be at the end of the clone’s reproductive lifetime that the animal may be processed for food, which FDA concluded in its risk assessment is safe and wholesome.

However, Walton said ViaGen and other companies providing cloning technology are developing a management program that will individually identify clones so they can be tracked and kept out of any part of the food chain — a restaurant, for example — that does not want meat and milk from the clones.

“We’re working to educate the food industry” that the meat and milk going into the food system will be from commercial livestock and that it’s “completely indistinguishable” from commercial livestock that are not offspring of clones. “There is no difference” between the products of the two, he said. “Like bovine somatotropin, it’s impossible to (find a difference).”

“The progeny of clones are not clones,” Wilkinson emphasized.

Consumers will not be made to drink milk or eat meat from clones, and there is no such thing as “cloned milk” or “cloned meat,” Walton and Wilkinson said.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Part two of this series will cover who will clone and why they will clone.)

FYI

Most bananas, apples, grapes, pears, peaches and potatoes consumers buy in local supermarkets and eat today are produced using cloning technology. Other cloning facts are available at www.fda.gov/cvm/CloningRA_Myths.htm.

About ViaGen

VIAGEN was established in Austin, Texas, by a group of geneticists and other researchers with Austin-based Genomic FX, a start-up tech company that provided DNA testing services but went out of business in the NASDAQ market collapse of 2001.

The group was headed by Dr. Scott Davis, who co-founded Genomic FX and previously was chair of genetics faculty at Texas A&M University. The group secured private funding and founded ViaGen in 2002.

In its early projects, ViaGen was involved in functional genomics and the identification of disease-resistant shrimp, but in 2003, it acquired ProLinia, an animal cloning pioneer, and combined ProLinia’s expertise in cloning with its own knowledge of genomics to transition into assisted reproductive services (Feedstuffs, July 7, 2003).

The acquisition gave ViaGen access to the cloning platform the Roslin Institute used to clone “Dolly,” and that was subsequently acquired by ProLinia.

ViaGen cloned its first animal, a pig, in 2003 and has since then cloned cattle and horses. Most of its work involves performance, or show, animals, but in anticipation of the Food & Drug Administration’s final rule this year on the safety of milk and meat from animals produced from clones, the company recently partnered with Trans Ova Genetics to offer cloning services to the cattle industry (Feedstuffs, April 23).

ViaGen also is involved in gene banking, a process that preserves animal genes for long-term storage in liquid nitrogen, i.e., cryopreservation. Animal owners may choose to bank an animal’s genes if the animal is particularly valuable and they want to possibly duplicate it in the future to multiply that value or if the animal becomes injured or dies unexpectedly.

The company has no plans to clone animals other than cattle, swine and horses but will gene bank any mammal other than primates, according to president Dr. Mark Walton. “We have quite a variety of mammalian DNA in our cryopreservation tanks,” he said, including DNA from antelopes, buffaloes and a lion.

The company opened ViaGen de Mexico earlier this year and also has offices in Canada. It is expected that many countries, especially in Latin America, will follow FDA’s lead, according to director of business development and sales Blake Russell. Argentina and Brazil will present “immediate opportunities,” he said.

ViaGen currently is owned by a number of equity investment interests, and ViaGen and Cyagra in Elizabethtown, Pa., are regarded as the leading specialists in the U.S. in cloning technology.

The two companies maintain a joint web site to answer questions about cloning at www.clonesafety.org.

CHICAGO — Cloned animals are exact genetic copies of the donor animals — they are not genetically modified.

“Clones are identical twins separated by time,” stated Mark Walton, president of ViaGen, Inc., at last week’s BIO 2006 convention.

BIO 2006 was the 14th annual international convention of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. With the theme, “Brilliant science, smart business, better living, it’s all here,” the event drew a record attendance of over 19,000 people from 62 countries.

The birth of the sheep, Dolly in 1996 represents the beginning of cloning for many people. “One of the myths that surrounds cloning is that animals die prematurely,” Walton stated. “But here are a group of cloned sheep that were born about the same time as Dolly and they are reaching about nine years old.”

Researchers have actually been working on cloning techniques long before the birth of Dolly. “In fact, 10 years prior to that the first sheep was born from embryonic cell nuclear transfer,” the speaker said. “In 1983, the first mammal was cloned using embryonic cells, 30 years before that, frogs were cloned and in 1928 the first nuclear transfers were done.”

Walton identified several benefits of cloning. “Cloning removes the guesswork from breeding – you can select animals for their performance,” he stated. “It also can accelerate the dissemination of genetics.”

Not only can cloning accelerate the dissemination, it allows the use of the very best genetics. “As a result we can improve the quality and consistency and we have the opportunity to reduce the environmental foot print,” Walton stated.

For example, the speaker said, the average Holstein dairy cow in the U.S. produces 19,600 pounds of milk and there are Holstein cows that are producing 40,000 pounds of milk. “So there is an opportunity to use cloning to reproduce animals capable of producing twice or more milk,” he explained.

In the beef industry, Walton said, it is not uncommon for cattlemen to pay $5,000-$6,000 per commercial bull. “With cloning, they could be looking at copies of the best bulls and instead of having one producer take advantage, those genetics could be disseminated across many herds.

Currently the swine industry produces about 100 million market hogs in the U.S., the speaker reported. “So if we cloned 1.5 percent of those as terminal and/or grand sires a year, by capturing those genetics that would add $3 per market animal value to the industry or a $300 million annual impact.”

Cloning is another assisted reproduction technology that people in the livestock industry may use to continue to improve breeding efficiency.

“A.I. was first done in the 1300s by horse breeders, embryo transfer was developed in 1891, invitro fertilization was done in 1959 and embryo freezing became commonplace in the early 1970s,” Walton reported. “So cloning is the next step in assisted reproduction technology.”

Leah Wilkinson, director of food safety for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said, there are over 800,000 cow-calf producers in the U.S. “Over 48 percent of these producers have less than 100 head,” she added. “So with technology like this, how can it be useful to them to get the best rate of return on investment?”

In addition, the food safety director said, a lot depends on the reaction of consumers. “We have to have demand for our product, so whatever we do, we do not want to hurt the confidence in our product,” she stressed.

Cloning may be used to improve the consistency of beef products. “We continue to strive to provide products that taste the same, have the same tenderness or are the same size,” Wilkinson explained. “Or we could use cloning to produce a higher quality product, last year 2.9 percent of the carcasses graded prime.”

Another goal of cloning could be to produce healthier animals. “We think this has the best potential to provide something to the consumer that’s not just a production benefit,” the speaker said. “Maybe healthier animals that shed less E.coli or salmonella could be produced.”

Cattle producers are constantly faced with additional proposals for more environmental regulations of the industry. “So cloning could lessen that environmental impact from each animal, whether from production benefits like higher rate of gain or if we could find something to lessen the environmental impact,” the food safety director said.

“NCBA does not have a policy on cloning,” Wilkinson reported. “We are looking at the cost of the technology and how that will impact the use.”

As the organization continues to evaluate the technology, Wilkinson said, it will be important to address issues such as if the animals will need to be segregated and if there will be labeling requirements for the beef products.

“We must look at what needs to be done to meet the needs of consumers,” she concluded.

For more information about the Biotechnology Industry Organization, visit the website at: www.bio.org.

Content © 2006 AgriNews

EVER SINCE the Food and Drug Administration officially vouched for the safety of food derived from cloned animals last month, Americans have given themselves a long and unnecessary national stomachache. Citing concerns over everything from safety to ethics, many of them told pollsters that they are apprehensive about milk and meat from clones entering supermarkets. Members of Congress are preparing to push legislation requiring food from clones and their progeny to be labeled as such. And, The Post’s Rick Weiss reported recently, a new controversy is brewing over whether food providers can label products from the offspring of cloned animals as “organic,” even if ranchers follow federal criteria for such labels.

All of which is to say that there is a lot of misunderstanding about the issue of cloning livestock for food production. One of the most common — and commonly exploited — misconceptions is that once the meat and milk industries begin selling food from clones and their offspring, animal products from clones will flood supermarkets. In fact, cloning animals is very expensive; ranchers would not clone an animal only to slaughter it. Instead, ranchers will clone animals with desirable traits, such as leaner meat, and breed the resulting genetic copies with other animals, bettering herds over the course of generations.

The process is almost identical to time-tested methods of animal husbandry, and it is very similar to modern crop breeding. The result for consumers is consistently better meat and other animal products from the progeny of clones, which experts agree are safe to eat, not from clones themselves, which are also safe but which contain subtle genetic differences from parent animals that anti-cloning activists exploit to stoke public outcry. High-quality animal products will probably also become more abundant and, therefore, cheaper.

As the debate over cloned food intensifies — expect a battle involving the cloning industry, anti-cloning advocates, the FDA and Congress this year — it is important for the public not to overestimate the differences between cloning livestock for the purpose of breeding and what American ranchers and breeders already do to better their flocks and herds. The facts are less threatening than many Americans realize.

Your opinion piece on animal cloning (Jan. 8th) called for the labeling of food products that come from cloned animals. I would like to take this opportunity to provide a different opinion. The biotech industry is a strong supporter of labeling standards that are science-based and give consumers meaningful information about the foods that they buy and eat.

Current labeling regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are intended to ensure that labels do not carry false claims, and accurately and clearly provide consumers with important nutritional information about the food product being purchased and consumed. More important, the FDA labeling regulation specifies that there is no need to place potentially misleading and confusing labels on a food product that is nutritionally equivalent to its counterparts.

The FDA this month announced that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are the same as food from conventionally raised animals — that they are no different in nutritional composition or safety from products currently on the market. Based on FDA’s labeling policy, it is unlikely that food products from cloned animals and their offspring will require labeling.

This is for two reasons. First, there is no scientific or safety reason for labeling. Second, because few consumers will ever eat meat or milk from an animal clone, a label for “cloned food” is inaccurate. More likely, meat and milk products in the marketplace will come from the conventionally bred offspring of animal clones — this doesn’t make them clones themselves, but naturally born piglets and calves of parents who are animal clones.

The biotech industry certainly supports the right of food companies to voluntarily provide labels to facilitate consumer choice — provided such labels do not mislead consumers. Food companies have the right to place “exclusionary” labels on their products, denoting them to be “clone free” – but, according to FDA regulations on voluntary claims, they must be truthful, should not mislead consumers, and should not communicate superiority in terms of safety or health.

Every day Americans benefit from eating safe and healthful meat and milk products that are the result of a variety of assisted reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination, embryo transfer, and in vitro fertilization. In fact, today 75 percent of dairy cattle and 80 percent of swine are born through artificial insemination. Despite the extensive use of these technologies in the production of our food supply, consumers don’t choose between milk cartons labeled as “milk produced through natural mating,” “milk produced through artificial insemination,” and “milk produced through in vitro fertilization” because this information is extraneous and non-descriptive of the final product.

THERE IS NO scientific reason why future labels should read “milk produced from a granddaughter of an animal clone” — the breeding method used to produce the milk has no impact on safety or nutrition and this information will only confuse the consumer.

Consumers have a right to know that their food products are safe and nutritious, and that food animals are raised in a safe, healthy, and conscientious manner. Animal cloning has the ability to provide livestock producers with a new breeding tool that can encourage the rearing of healthy cattle and swine. And healthy animals produce healthful foods.

JIM GREENWOOD is President and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in Washington.

I am a recovering perfectionist.

Do you know any perfectionists? If you do, pity them, for they are often held back by an unseen enemy that lurks in their mind. It makes ‘em negative.

The recent fuss surrounding the Food and Drug Administration’s ruling that meat and milk from cloned animals are no different from the products of others may be the most recent ‘case in point’ of a perfectionist’s attempt to hold the rest of us ‘hostage’ and protect us.

When we look across the history of man’s progress, we discover that each milestone is marked by a technology ‘tipping point’. Fire, the wheel, electricity, metallurgy, modern agriculture and a host of things have made our lives easier and always a better experience for the next generation.

So why is someone like Charles Margulis from a Washington, DC consumer group so intent on demanding ‘perfect’ regulation of livestock cloning before any of it is available for the market? “Why is there such a rush to get these products on the market?” he said.

What rush is he referring to here? Is it the twenty year research ‘rush’ followed by the FDA six year exhaustive study?

The FDA didn’t merely flip a coin to determine the safety of this potential food product. Instead, it conducted a detailed investigation. Its ruling wasn’t just a short press release written by the office intern, but a 678-page risk-assessment report that was produced in collaboration with an independent panel of scientific experts.

“Extensive evaluation of the available data has not identified any food consumption risks or subtle hazards in healthy clones of cattle, swine, or goats,” it concluded.

Some rush job, eh?

And is this ‘rush’ job over? The FDA is now seeking feedback to this draft report from the public, and its recommendations won’t be finalized until it has reviewed all of the submissions filed during a 90-day comment period that runs until April. Anybody can go on the FDA’s website and register a view on the subject.

Let’s assume that, even after all of this, the FDA remains convinced that cloned food is safe to eat. A huge marketing challenge remains given the public’s uneasiness over cloning. That suggests to me that literally none of these animals will show up at your local Safeway in anything resembling a rush. McDonald’s is not on the verge of selling cloneburgers!

Animal cloning is an expensive proposition. It simply costs too much money for cloned animals to compete with conventional animals as sources of food. They can cost up to $15,000 apiece, according to the Washington Post. As a result, there are believed to be fewer than 1,000 of them in the United States.

The goal, of course, is that they can improve our food–and make it even safer, healthier, and tastier. The beef industry is always seeking to heighten the quality and consistency of its product. Cloning is simply an additional tool that producers eventually may choose to adopt if it helps them meet the demands of consumers. In all likelihood, few people will eat the meat of cloned animals–though they might eat the meat of animals that are descended from clones.

If that still sounds strange, think of it this way: Cloned animals are identical twins born at different times. We already eat cloned food right now. Take bananas. The yellow Cavendish bananas we buy in the store are genetically identical clones of each other. Certain kinds of potatoes and grapes are clones as well.

There was no rush in the FDA judgment. Now, perhaps, we should assume the market will do its job as well.

Hmmm. I wonder if there would be any people walking around today if pure perfectionism had been there to choke off the use of fire. Well, maybe the cavemen went ahead because fire was so hard to label. Maybe, they decided it was warm.

Reg Clause, a Truth About Trade and Technology board member (www.truthabouttrrade.org) raises cattle, corn and soybeans on a fourth generation family farm in central Iowa.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as expected, recently decided eating meat and milk from cloned animals is just as safe as eating such products from conventional animals.

The agency says there is no science-based reason to keep food from cloned animals off the market or label it in any special way.

Next comes the public’s reaction, which unfortunately is expected to be based more on vague emotions than on science. A recent poll indicated that 64 percent of consumers are uncomfortable with animal cloning.

However, that same poll shows that the public doesn’t know much about cloning. But attitudes improve when consumers learn about the benefits and proven safety of the technology and its derived food products.

Of course, we’ve been here before. When food products of biotechnology hit the market in the mid-1990s, the FDA said biotech foods were just as safe as conventional foods and no special labeling was needed. That didn’t stop opponents from labeling it with scary monikers such as “Frankenfood,” even though there were no legitimate health concerns.

Cloning and biotechnology are completely different. Cloning creates a genetic twin of an existing animal, while biotechnology changes the genetic makeup of an organism.

What these technologies do share is the feeling some people have that we’re meddling with Mother Nature. But Mother Nature creates some problems of her own, such as diseases and birth defects that can be limited through cloning.

The key to consumer confidence is helping the public understand what the technology is, how consumers and animals can benefit from it, and the credibility of the government’s regulation of it. People want to know what’s in their food, and if their food is changing, what’s in it for them.

Cloning involves taking a cell from an animal with positive traits, such as general good health, then using the DNA in that cell to duplicate the good traits in an animal known as the clone.

Thousands of scientific studies show that cloned animals are healthy and lab animals raised on clone-derived food have few health problems. The FDA decision is based on those studies.

In addition to minimizing diseases in livestock, cloning also can be used to create more productive animals with desired meat characteristics. It could even help save endangered species from extinction by banking cells for use later on, in case their numbers dwindle.

Information about these benefits and cloning in general is available at the website www.clonesafety.org. The site has links to many of the same studies that FDA considered in making its decision.

The FDA must base its regulatory decisions on science; the public is not bound by that requirement and will have adequate time to comment during the comment period on FDA’s ruling.

But polls show the public’s feelings about this new technology are changeable. With more information and understanding, consumers, too, can make their decisions based on facts, not emotions.

Lynne Finnerty is the editor of FBNews, a publication of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The federal Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that meat and milk from certain cloned livestock and their offspring are as safe to eat as any other meat and milk, a welcome step toward allowing this developing technique to improve the nation’s food supply.

We’re sure the usual opponents of progress in the misnamed “consumer” movement will disagree, just as there are many people who protest the use of genetic engineering to improve crop yields. But they shouldn’t be able to impose their views on people who either don’t care one way or the other or actually believe it’s a good idea to move forward.

It won’t happen soon, anyway. The FDA will be asking for public comment until April 2, and may not make a final decision until the end of 2007. In the meantime, a voluntary moratorium that has been in place since 2003 will continue.

There are only a few hundred cloned domestic animals now, because they’re expensive to produce and because as long as the moratorium is in place, farmers can’t do anything productive with them. Unless the technology becomes much cheaper, there probably never will be a great many; they won’t be cloned directly for food, but as superior breeding animals, whose offspring will form herds managed in conventional ways.

So even after the moratorium is lifted, if it is, several years will pass before any significant amount of food derived indirectly from cloned animals will appear in stores or restaurants.

If the FDA decides to allow commercial use to proceed, it will also face a decision on whether to require labeling, and probably considerable pressure from certain quarters to do so. At present, it appears the agency is leaning against mandatory labeling, which is sensible. Tracking the origin of every animal in order to classify it as clone-free (or not) might well prove impractical, and would certainly be costly.

If there are no issues of public health or safety, such a requirement is unnecessary. What greater benefits would mandatory labeling offer compared with voluntary labeling? If there really is a public demand for clone-free meat and milk, no doubt specialized producers will emerge to meet the demand, even if the products are indistinguishable. They can label their products, but that doesn’t mean everybody should have to.

We expect, though, that once cloning is a commercial practice, people will get used to the idea. Then they’ll pay no more attention to whether an animal has a clone in its ancestry than they do now to whether it was conceived by artificial insemination, as about 90 percent of dairy cows are.

Did you even know that? And now that you do, do you care? The milk is the same.