Viagen in the News
Clones’ beef, milk same as regular
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
April 11th, 2005
There is no difference between meat and milk from cloned livestock and those foods obtained from conventionally bred cattle, according to a study released today.
The report by scientists at the University of Connecticut and the Kagoshima Prefectural Cattle Breeding Development Institute in Japan is the first major research paper on the safety of food from cloned animals.
The findings raise both hope and concern among breeders, companies and watchdog groups. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to rule soon on whether to allow the sale of meat and milk for human consumption from cloned livestock.
The scientists examined the composition of meat from two cloned beef cattle and milk from four cloned dairy cows. They considered 100 physiological, tissue and cellular components and found no significant differences.
“I would have been very surprised if there had been a difference. There was no good scientific evidence that there would be a difference, and there isn’t,” says George Seidel, a reproductive embryologist at Colorado State University who is familiar with the study.
Only two beef cattle were slaughtered for testing because such animals are rare, and at about $20,000 to create, they cost too much to destroy, says X. Jerry Yang, director of the Center for Regenerative Biology at the University of Connecticut.
The FDA “has been waiting for such data because there’re aren’t many clones available and no one wanted to kill valuable animals to do the studies,” he says.
The study appears in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
There is now no law governing the sale of meat or milk from the estimated 1,000 to 2,000 cloned farm animals in the USA. Since 2003, the FDA has asked producers to voluntarily keep the meat and milk of these animals, as well as that of their offspring, out of the food supply.
Livestock are cloned because the chosen breeds produce high-quality meat or lots of milk. Because of the expense of producing clones, the animals are intended for breeding rather than for meat or milk production.
Even if the FDA does approve the consumption of clones, “when the floodgates open, it will be a trickle,” says Scott Davis, president of Start Licensing, which owns most of the patents on the techniques that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996. Dolly was the first mammal clone.
“But there’s a lot of pent-up demand to the people who can use them to improve breeding,” Davis says.
An FDA ruling will be an important first step because the next Question–and the real moneymaker–is whether to allow the sale of meat and milk from animals that are genetically modified to either produce healthier food or to be resistant to disease.
For example, scientists announced this week the creation of dairy cows genetically engineered to resist mastitis, an infection of cows’ udders that costs the U.S. dairy industry more than $2 billion every year through lost productivity. Once such an animal has been created, cloning could quickly build up a herd.
Among those waiting for an FDA ruling is Bob Schauf of Barron, Wis., who had his prize-winning cow, Stookey-Elmpark Blackrose, cloned four years ago when he thought he’d be able to market her offspring. But he and Stookey’s two clones–each of which cost about $25,000 to create–have been in limbo.
“She was a real special cow, her bloodlines, her physical characteristics, her pedigree. And a tremendous milker,” he says. “God’s still in charge. (The clones are) a little different, a little bigger and smaller, the markings aren’t the same. But the bone structure’s the same.”