ViaGen in the News
Perspective — FDA Says Cloned Food Is Safe to Consume
By Lynne Finnerty, Farm Week
January 11, 2007
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.