July
2007
Cloned
or Noncloned Meat: The Choice May Not Be Ours
By Valerie Yeager
Today’s Dietitian
Vol. 9 No. 7 P. 44
Some argue cloning will produce healthier
beef and dairy products; others call it Frankenfood. But that
and other issues aside, should cloned animal products enter
the food supply unlabeled?
Dolly shook the world. If a sheep could be cloned,
what would be next? Your beloved family pet? People? The options
seemed endless … and terrifying. Cloning can change the
life cycle as we know it, and now its ramifications are extending
to the food industry.
Between Christmas 2006 and New Year’s
Day 2007, the FDA released a long-awaited draft risk assessment
report concluding that it is safe to eat the dairy and meat
products of cloned cattle, swine, and goats and their noncloned
offspring. From December 28, 2006, to May 3, 2007, the floor
was open for individuals and organizations to comment on the
FDA’s draft risk assessment. If the comments were generally
favorable, the proposal would possibly be approved following
this public comment period.
Advocates of livestock cloning claim the animals
will be disease-resistant, provide larger quantities of milk,
and produce leaner and more tender meat. But skeptics argue
that too many unanswered questions remain concerning food safety
and animal welfare.
Does the FDA have enough evidence to declare
that cloning animals for meat and dairy is a safe and worthwhile
practice? And, possibly even more surprising, the FDA has concluded
that products from cloned animals won’t require labeling,
leaving consumers in the dark regarding the origin of their
meat and milk products. In the wake of the recent Escherichia
coli outbreak and peanut butter recalls, American consumers
are already increasingly distrustful of the food supply. But
this is not only a debate about food safety; it’s also
a question of ethics.
Uncertainty Abounds
In 2001, the FDA asked farmers to voluntarily refrain from marketing
any meat or milk from cloned animals or their offspring until
safety was proven.1 A 2002 National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
report found “no current evidence” that cloned animal
products were unfit to eat, but it recommended more studies
be completed. In 2003, the FDA declared such products “likely”
safe but made no final ruling.
A 2004 NAS report states, “Since there
is no evidence that food from cloned animals poses any increased
health risk to the consumer, it should be concluded that food
from cloned animals should be approved for consumption. However,
the paucity of evidence in the literature on this topic makes
it impossible to provide scientific evidence to support this
position.”2
The lack of conclusive scientific evidence has
made both experts and the general public apprehensive about
approving the safety of meat and milk products in the past.
Will the FDA’s draft be accepted this time around?
Cloning Technology
Gary Weaver, DVM, PhD, director of the program on agriculture
and animal health policy at the Center for Food, Nutrition,
and Agriculture Policy at the University of Maryland, explains
the animal cloning process: “In animal cloning, the genetic
material from the male donor with the desirable traits is not
diluted, as it is with natural reproduction when all genetic
materials from donor and recipient are randomly mixed. ... The
newest, most promising cloning method first isolates a donor
animal cell nucleus [containing virtually all of the cell’s
genetic material], then places it into a recipient’s egg
with its nucleus removed. The resulting embryo is transferred
to a female to carry to term.”
An animal clone is essentially an exact genetic
copy of a donor animal, with no genetic manipulation or any
genetic material added or removed during the process.
By retaining the most desirable traits of the
male donor, the strongest and healthiest animals are reproduced.
The current appeal of cloned animals to the livestock industry
largely lies in their role as breeders or milk producers. Ken
White, PhD, professor in the department of animal, dairy, and
veterinary sciences at Utah State University, says, “I
would eat a steak from a cloned animal and not lose a nanosecond
worrying about it. But no one is going to do all the work required
to clone an animal just to eat it. It would be far too expensive.
The place I see for cloning in the industry is being able to
create multiple offspring of superior animals that would then
be used for conventional breeding. Will the offspring of clones
have the characteristics that made the original cell donors
exceptional animals? That’s what we are trying to learn,
and that’s where cloning can impact the livestock industry.”
Only approximately 600 cloned cows, swine, and
goats are believed to presently exist in the United States.
One of these cows can cost as much as $15,000, and a pig $4,000.
Pro-Cloning
Those in favor of cloning assert that the technology will allow
farmers and ranchers to accelerate the reproduction of their
most productive livestock; produce healthier, lower fat animals;
minimize the use of antibiotics, growth hormones, and other
chemicals; and protect endangered species.
Weaver argues in defense of cloned animals over
traditionally bred livestock: “USDA prime beef, currently
about 3% of all beef steaks, could become our only grade of
beef—and at affordable prices. Also, fewer superior dairy
cows could produce the same quantity of milk while making less
animal waste.”
Weaver even supports cloning when ethics enters
the limelight of the discussion. “Some organizations claim
that animal cloning is unnatural for human intervention, but
that bridge was crossed many centuries ago. For millennia, people
have closely controlled domestic animal production to develop
specific animal breeds for companionship, food, and work,”
he says. “Today, all breeds of cattle, dogs, cats, pigs,
horses, chickens, plus all other domestic animals, are the direct
result of intensive, unending human intervention using selective
animal breeding programs. None of today’s domestic animal
breeds would ever have developed using only natural selection
and random breeding. There would be no Holstein cows for superior
milk production or Angus cattle for high-quality beef. There
would most certainly be no Siamese cats or Chihuahua dogs if
humans had let ‘nature take its course.’”
Weaver agrees with the FDA’s decision
to declare products from cloned animals and their noncloned
offspring safe. “FDA experts have carefully studied all
available scientific reports about animal cloning for more than
five years,” he says. But is five years enough? What about
possible long-term effects?
Anti-Cloning Lacking
Evidence
According to the FDA’s Web site, the “FDA neither
supports nor opposes cloning food-producing animals. FDA’s
job is to protect public health.” But the agency makes
generic claims using nonscientific standards, such as that meat
and milk products from cloned animals are “virtually indistinguishable”
from conventional livestock.
Jeffrey M. Smith, executive director of the
Institute for Responsible Technology, says the FDA cannot be
trusted. “The FDA’s recent announcement declaring
milk and meat from cloned animals as safe reminds us of their
1992 approval of GM [genetically modified] crops. When the agency’s
internal files were made public years later, they revealed that
the FDA’s GMO [genetically modified organisms] policy
was dictated by corporate manipulation, not sound science. Warnings
by government scientists were ignored by political appointees
from the biotech industry. And, like GMOs, the FDA does not
want labels on cloned food, thereby forcing the entire population
into their dangerous, uncontrolled experiment. GMOs are linked
to many health risks, such as allergies, immune system dysfunction,
potentially precancerous cell growth, stunted organs, and death,”
he says. “The safety information on cloned milk and meat
is totally insufficient—much of it based, for example,
on meaningless industry studies measuring protein and fat content.
If health problems do arise, it may be quite difficult to identify
cloned foods as the cause.”
The FDA provides a general response on its Web
site to those who believe more long-term studies should be completed
before cloning is approved for food purposes: “Cloning
doesn’t put any new substances into an animal, so there’s
no ‘new’ substance to test. Feeding milk or meat
from clones to lab animals as part of a regular diet wouldn’t
let us tell whether any negative outcomes observed were due
to the food from clones or something else the lab animals came
across. It isn’t possible to have someone [or even lab
animals] eat only meat or drink only milk. Doing so would not
provide a healthful diet and would likely cause illness. Food
scientists, toxicologists, and regulators have faced this problem
before and decided that long-term feeding trials of whole foods
don’t give meaningful results.”3
Animal Welfare
Cloning technology is far from perfect. On average, 96% to 99%
of cloning attempts are unsuccessful, and hundreds of animals
suffer in the process of creating just one healthy clone. Also,
the vast majority of cloned fetuses develop abnormally and die
in the womb, often jeopardizing the health of the surrogate
mothers. The few clones that survive birth often die shortly
thereafter from any number of serious physical or physiological
defects, including abnormally large bodies, compromised immune
systems, and malformed organs. Animal rights’ activists
are pushing for the abolishment of cloning.
Sick clones are not only an ethical question
but can also lead to nutrition concerns. “We know that
cloned animals have high death rates and are often sick; their
offspring may also suffer deformities or problems. Sick animals
may be treated with drugs such as antibiotics, steroid hormones,
and growth factors, which in turn may end up in our food supply
or environment,” says Smith, author of Genetic Roulette:
The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods
and Seeds of Deception.
Labeling
To the dismay of the health conscious, the FDA currently has
no plans of labeling products from cloned animals. Sigrid Fry-Revere,
JD, PhD, director of bioethics studies at the Cato Institute,
believes consuming products from cloned animals or their noncloned
offspring should be left to the consumer’s discretion.
But without proper labeling, consumers can’t choose because
they won’t know.
“The FDA has no business basing its policies
on the moral status of animals or religious objections to tampering
with nature. Such ethical questions, in a pluralist society
like ours, are best left up to individual conscience. Those
who disagree on religious or moral grounds should be free to
speak out, boycott, or not participate in the objectionable
activity, but those who do not object should be equally free
to produce food from clones and/or eat it,” says Fry-Revere.
The Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act only allows
the FDA to require labeling for altered foods or foods with
additives, and meat from cloned animals doesn’t fit the
definition of either. So what can be done?
Fry-Revere offers a suggestion: “Nutritionists
who care about whether meat comes from cloned animals or not
should make their concerns known, not to the FDA or Congress,
but to the meat producers, distributors, and, most importantly,
to their meat retailers. Demand to know or refuse to purchase
meat that isn’t guaranteed to be ‘clone free.’
And before you could get anyone at the FDA to return a call
or your congressman to agree to discuss the matter, the signs
and labels will start appearing at the meat counter, in ads
for grocery stores, and on the meat packages. It would be stupid
for those producers who don’t use cloned meat not to capitalize
on that fact—it couldn’t do anything but help their
business to add a sticker that costs less than a penny that
says ‘Not from cloned animals.’”
In addition to sustaining consumer confidence
in the food system, labeling protects the entry of cloned animals
and their offspring into the organic food system. It also protects
organic livestock producers from financial losses associated
with the accidental introduction of cloned animals into the
organic herd.
Animal cloning is not allowed for organic production
under the USDA National Organic Program because it relies on
cell fusion, which is explicitly prohibited in organic production.
Clearly, cloning is impossible under natural conditions. If
labeling isn’t required and clones aren’t tracked,
anti-cloning consumers may be forced to purchase organic meat
just to avoid cloned meats. In this circumstance, the idea of
cloning creating lower prices for high-quality meats may not
be the case, especially considering a 2005 survey conducted
for the International Food Information Council, that found that
63% of Americans would not buy cloned food even if it were labeled
as being safe.
Conclusion
While advanced cloning technology is impressive, larger issues
of food safety and ethics must be taken into consideration before
cloning can be deemed a safe way to produce meat and milk products.
“If implemented on a wide scale, cloning reduces genetic
diversity, exposing our food supply to widespread losses from
disease or environmental changes. Approving food from cloned
animals is dangerous and irresponsible,” says Smith.
So is fooling with Mother Nature to produce
higher quality and supposedly healthier meat and milk products
worth the potential risks? The debate is unlikely to slow down
anytime soon.
— Valerie Yeager is an editor and
freelance writer in Philadelphia.
References
1. Roosevelt M. Would you eat a clone? Time. 2005;165(24):47.
2. Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine,
Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, Board on Life Sciences,
Earth and Life Studies. Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods:
Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects. The National
Academies Press. 2004.
3. U.S. Food & Drug Administration. “Animal
Cloning: FAQs About Cloning for Consumers.” Available
here.
Last accessed April 27, 2007.
