Clone Away

The Chicago Tribune’s January 13th edition included an article that featured an Iowan dairy farmer who cloned a prized cow. The story was tied to the January 15th announcement by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe for humans to consume.

The FDA found cattle, swine, and goats that are cloned to be safe for consumption. In addition, the offspring of cloned traditional food animals are acceptable to the FDA. However, cloned sheep and other animals that are not cattle, swine, or goat are not recommended to be consumed directly.  Labeling of products from cloned animals, or their offspring, is not being required by the FDA.

Ben & Jerry’s web site includes an animated cow singing about cloning, which I have not heard. The ice cream company’s site also expresses concern about possible limitations on labeling by companies who want to stress that their products do not include ingredients from cloned animals.

        

Practical cloning of farm animals has been experimented with since at least the early 1980’s. The FDA’s January 15th statement notes that U.S. producers voluntarily agreed to withhold cloned products from the marketplace until after the FDA made its evaluation. It is not clear at this time how quickly such products will begin to appear in grocery stores or in restaurants.

Frank Reagan of Waukon, Iowa, the farmer featured in the Chicago Tribune story, uses milk from Debra, a six-year-old clone, and four other cloned cows to feed to calves. In the article, Regan is noted as saying that using the milk is cheaper than buying milk supplements. Animals who consume milk from cloned animals, are the offspring of cloned animals, or are otherwise not the original clone are considered by the industry to be no different from any other animal.

The Seattle Times reported on January 12, 2008, that the European Food Safety Authority issued a draft opinion that stated risk for consumers from meat and milk of cloned animals is “very unlikely.” The article goes on to note that the European Union may not approve sales of the products, however. In Europe social and ethical factors must be considered and many Europeans support the concept of the precautionary principal.

A 2004 paper by D.C. Faber, L.B. Ferre, et al., published by Mary Ann Leibert, Inc. identifies several potential uses for cloned animals. These include the production of pharmaceuticals in transgenic cattle and the use of clones for research. The summary of the paper opines, “[t]he ultimate goal of cloning has often been envisioned as a system for producing quantity and uniformity of the perfect dairy cow.”

Denise O’Brien reacted to the FDA’s rule in a telephone interview I conducted with her by saying, “I think it is a dangerous thing.” She said the decision “is an indication of how closely connected our FDA is with the industrial…culture of agriculture.” O’Brien is coordinator of the Women, Food & Agriculture Network and ran or Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture in 2006.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.