-FDA determined food from offspring of cloned animals as safe as other non-cloned food

-USDA to help facilitate marketing of this food, encourages providers delay sending into food supply

-Consumer groups speaking in opposition, Major companies not planning to use cloned products

-Opponents question ethics

Cloned food could become commonplace on store shelves after the Food and Drug Administration determined food from most cloned livestock and their offspring as safe as traditional meats and dairy.,”

• FDA determined food from offspring of cloned animals as safe as other non-cloned food
• USDA to help facilitate marketing of this food, encourages providers delay sending into food supply
• Consumer groups speaking in opposition, Major companies not planning to use cloned products
• Opponents question ethics

Cloned food could become commonplace on store shelves after the Food and Drug Administration determined food from most cloned livestock and their offspring as safe as traditional meats and dairy.

The FDA said in a Jan. 15 press release it will not require labeling or any additional measures for food from clones or their offspring because this food is "no different from food derived from conventionally bred animals."

Since 2001 the FDA has studied and reviewed public response on livestock cloning. During this time, U.S. suppliers agreed to hold food from clones and their offspring from entering the market.

Last week, the risk assessment concluded that "meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals." More research is needed to determine the safety of meat from cloned sheep, according to the assessment.

The FDA's assessment said its duty was to determine the safety of products from cloned animals based on scientific analysis and not on ethics, but that it will use its scientific expertise to assist others examining ethical concerns.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week that it supports the FDA's decision and will work with producers and suppliers to put foods from clones and their offspring into the market. But it called for the continuation of the voluntary moratorium on distribution of the foods during the transition time. USDA said other forms of assisted reproduction like artificial insemination were used to breed superior animals. Cloning is another of these techniques and has been proven safe.

Marquette professor of biological sciences Kathleen Karrer said there is a stigma on cloning, but cloning occurs in nature even without human intervention. Identical twins are clones because they have the same genetic makeup, and single-celled organisms reproduce clones of themselves.

"There's nothing intrinsically different about an organism that is a clone," she said.

To clone an animal, Karrer said scientists grow the cloned embryo in a lab and treat it with hormones to stimulate reproduction. There, it multiplies until it is large enough inject into the uterus of a host animal.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Animal Sciences chair Dan Schaefer said the success rate of cloned animals that survive to maturity is very low. He estimates that only 5 percent of cloned embryos grow large enough to transfer into the host cow. Thirty percent of those injected into the cow will survive all the way through birth. He estimates one in three cattle clones born will survive to maturity. Karrer said the famous sheep clone Dolly may have taken 700 attempts before she was born in Scotland in 1997.

Schaefer said there is a low demand from farmers to have their animals cloned because of prohibitive costs. He estimated a cloned cow would cost around $10,000. Only the most superior animals would be cloned, he said, and it is unlikely that a clone would be re-cloned just for its meat or milk.

A clone would probably be used for breeding with other animals naturally to produce non-cloned animals that might have some of its cloned parent's traits. He said breeders would be most interested in cloning because they could clone one of their best animals and sell it to farmers who would use the animals to breed with their own herd.

A problem with cloning is that using the same animals for breeding could stunt the development of animals superior to the clones, Schaefer said.

"Cloning just does not allow for genetic progress," he said.

Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, said that polls show consumers do not want cloned foods to be put on the market.

"Just because the FDA says these products are safe doesn't mean consumers are obligated to eat them," he said.

Major companies like Dean Foods and Nestle USA said they are not currently using cloned animals and do not plan to do so in the near future.

"We do not currently manufacture any meat or dairy products derived from cloned animals," said Edie Burge, Nestle USA spokeswoman. She said consumers want to be more informed on the issue. "I think people really need to understand more about it."

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