FDA plays the ventriloquist dummy ; how fascism operates

[Guest guest]

Federal scientists have concluded there is no difference between food

from cloned animals and food from conventional livestock, setting the

stage for the government to declare Thursday that cloned animals are

safe for the human food supply.

The Food and Drug Administration planned to brief industry groups in

advance of an announcement. The agency indicated it would approve cloned

livestock in a scientific journal article published online earlier this

month.

The agency " concludes that meat and milk from clones and their progeny

is as safe to eat as corresponding products derived from animals

produced using contemporary agricultural practices, " FDA scientists

Larisa Rudenko and C. Matheson wrote in the January 1 issue of

Theriogenology.

Also, FDA believes that no special labels are needed for food from

clones or their offspring, the scientists wrote. Consumer groups say

labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable

with the idea of cloned livestock.

" Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety

issues and has a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any

labeling, " said ph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food

Safety.

Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation

of America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows cloning results

in more deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive

technologies.

The consumer federation will ask food companies and supermarkets to

refuse to sell food from clones, she said.

" Meat and milk from cloned animals have no benefit for consumers, and

consumers don't want them in their foods, " Foreman said.

The FDA scientists wrote that by the time clones reached 6 to 18 months

of age, they were " virtually indistinguishable " from conventionally bred

animals.

Final approval of cloned animals for food is months away; the FDA will

accept comments from the public after issuing a risk assessment on

Thursday.

Those in favor of the technology say it would be used primarily for

breeding and not for steak or pork tenderloin.

Cloning lets farmers and ranchers make copies of exceptional animals,

such as pigs that fatten rapidly or cows that are superior milk

producers.

" We clone an animal because we want a genetic twin of that animal, " said

Barb Glenn of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

" It's not a genetically engineered animal; no genes have been changed or

moved or deleted, " she said. " It's simply a genetic twin that we can

then use for future matings to improve the overall health and well-being

of the herd. "

Thus, consumers would mostly get food from their offspring and not the

clones themselves, Glenn said.

Still, some clones would end up in the food supply. As with conventional

livestock, a cloned bull or cow that outlived its usefulness would

probably wind up at a hamburger plant, and a cloned dairy cow would be

milked during her breeding years.

That's unlikely to happen soon, because FDA officials have asked farmers

and cloning companies since 2001 to voluntarily keep clones and their

offspring out of the food supply.

The informal ban would remain in place for several months while FDA

accepts comments from the public.

Approval of cloned livestock has taken five years because of pressure

from big food companies nervous that consumers might reject milk and

meat from cloned animals.

To clone, scientists replace all the genetic material in an egg with a

mature cell containing the complete genetic code from the donor. Cloners

argue that the resulting animal is simply the donor's twin, containing

an identical makeup. Yet there can be differences between the two

because of chance and environmental influences.

Some surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with food from cloned

animals; 64 percent said they were uncomfortable in a September poll by

the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonpartisan research

group.

A dairy industry spokeswoman said last week it would be reassuring if

the FDA concluded there were no safety issues.

" It remains to be seen whether dairy farmers will even choose to use

it, " said Ruland, spokeswoman for the International Dairy Foods

Association, which represents such brands as Kraft and Dannon.

" There are very few cloned dairy cows in this country, only about 150

out of the 9 million total U.S. dairy cows, and many of these are show

animals, " Ruland said.