Europe rules eating cloned animals is safe
Pastor Dale Morgan
Europe rules eating cloned animals is safe*
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 11/01/2008
Bacon, beef and milk produced from cloned animals moved closer to
British menus today when Europe’s official food watchdog concluded they
appear to pose no additional safety risk to consumers.
Food from cloned animals 'poses no safety risks'
Dolly's descendants could soon be on your plate
Delivering Europe’s first big scientific assessment of the
highly-charged issue, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issued
its draft opinion, concluding that cloned pigs, cows and their products
were as healthy and nutritious as their natural-born kin.
Because cloned animals are so expensive they will be used mostly for
breeding, almost all the food affected by the process will come from the
offspring of cloned beasts.
The Authority concludes: “It is very unlikely that any difference exists
in terms of food safety between food products from clones and their
progeny compared with conventionally-bred animals.”
The Food Standards Agency in the UK said Britons would not be eating
cloned food “for a few years, if at all,” and adds that it will be
“considering the food safety aspects of this report very carefully and
will provide comments to EFSA, to help ensure that it reaches
conclusions that are based on sound science.”
However, some experts believe Britons will eat cloned food before the
end of the decade, most likely when they visit America.
Today’s announcement will trigger the fury of biofundamentalists opposed
to the use of any high technology in the farmyard, from cloning to other
methods such as GM, and from those concerned by the animal welfare
implications, since clones suffer a higher death rate and birth defects.
The Authority estimates that in the EU there are about 100 cattle
clones, and fewer pig clones, with the total number of cloned cattle and
pigs alive world-wide fewer than 4000 1500 pigs, respectively.
It says meat and milk from healthy cloned pigs and cattle are within the
same nutritional range as those of the same animals bred normally.
The composition of the meat and milk from the cloned animals is also
within the normal range, the Authority’s draft opinion on the issue says.
“In view of these findings, and assuming that unhealthy clones are
removed from entering the food chain, as is the case with conventionally
bred animals, it is very unlikely that any difference exists in terms of
food safety between food products originating from clones and their
progeny compared with those derived from conventionally bred animals,”
the draft opinion concludes.
The main issue, it says, is one of animal welfare because death and
disease rates are significantly higher among cloned animals than those
reared conventionally, a problem seen since the birth of Dolly more than
a decade ago, the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell.
“The health and welfare of a significant proportion of clones have been
found to be adversely affected,” the Authority says, though it adds:
“The proportion of unhealthy clones is likely to decrease as the
technology improves.”
“While there would be no risk in consuming products from cloned animals
it would be completely inappropriate to use the present techniques to
produce food animals because of the welfare implications for some of the
clones or their mothers,” comments Prof Sir Ian Wilmut of the University
of Edinburgh, who led the Dolly cloning team.
“The value of the technique in livestock is for research and perhaps the
production of proteins or tissues that might be used in human medicine.”
Cloning is not done commercially in the EU at present, so the prospect
of eating cloned produce appears some years away, or in the context of
imports of cloned produce from America.
“Cloned animals are very expensive and it is not them but their
offspring (or offspring of their offspring) that might end up on
livestock farms,” says the FSA. “In the case of cattle, there would be a
gap of four to five years from the birth of a clone to its offspring
being ready to provide milk or meat for human consumption.”
The FSA believes that the marketing of food from cloned animals and
their offspring is subject to EU-wide regulations on novel foods.
A spokesman says: “In order to be legally marketed, such products would
have to undergo a rigorous safety assessment and the 27 member states
would have to agree that they were suitable for use in the EU and, if
so, how consumers should be informed (e.g. through labelling.)”
The draft opinion refers to cloned pigs and cattle only and makes
recommendations that more work be done on the effects of cloning, for
instance on “epigenetic effects” that do not alter DNA but are passed
down generations.
The opinion will now go out to public consultation.
Responses can be submitted by February 25, after which Efsa’s revised
opinion is expected to be published in May and will help inform any
decisions about measures by the EC and the European Parliament in
relation to animal clones and products obtained from these animals.
Last year, the the US Food and Drug Administration announced that cloned
livestock themselves were “virtually indistinguishable” from
conventional livestock and is expected to issue a positive ruling in the
coming weeks.