ViaGen in the News
Op-ed: Make Food Labels Meaningful to Consumers
By Jim Greenwood, Patriot-News
January 23, 2007
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.