Lots of shoppers think they have a new reason to be mad at the Food and Drug Administration. The agency concluded last week that it's safe to eat meat and milk from cloned pigs, cattle, goats and their progeny _ and didn't require labeling of such products. But there's something many shoppers don't realize: This food already is on the market.
Consider Indianhead Holsteins in Barron, Wis. In the late 1990s, Indianhead made three clones of Blackrose, "the greatest cow we ever owned," says co-owner Bob Schauf. Two of the clones went to other farms; Indianhead kept Blackrose3 and turned her into a breeder.
As a result, her milk isn't sold, but that of her offspring is.
That was a violation of the FDA's "voluntary moratorium." Until last week, the agency asked companies to keep products from clones and their offspring out of the food supply.
Schauf disagrees. "The way we understood (the ban), it was just products from clones," he says.
Welcome to the confusing world of cloned food, where the FDA had a ban on such products but didn't enforce it. (Hence the voluntary moratorium.)
Now that the FDA has ruled, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has changed the voluntary moratorium. Farmers can sell products from the offspring of clones, but not from clones themselves, says Bruce Knight, the USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.
There's a reason for the continued ban on cloned meat and milk. The USDA needs time to market the food to American shoppers and international trading partners. It has nothing to do with the safety of cloning, which Knight likens to common methods such as artificial insemination or embryo transfer.
"This is very much assisted reproductive technologies," he says.
So where does all this leave the consumer?
If cloning technology doesn't bother you, then don't change your shopping habits.
If you're against milk and meat from clones themselves, then buy organic. Cloning is not a permitted technology under the Organic Foods Production Act. (Since clones are expensive animals, it also makes more sense to use them as breeders instead of food. Schauf says Blackrose's first clone cost about $25,000. The subsequent ones cost about $5,000 each.)
If you'd like to avoid eating the offspring of clones, then watch what the USDA does next. The National Organic Standards Board recommended that "all generations of progeny of cloned animals" can't be organic _ but Knight didn't guarantee that the USDA would accept the board's recommendation.
"I haven't had a chance to see where the rulemaking is on that," he said last week.
Also pay attention to the farm bill. The Senate's bill asked for more studies about the safety and marketability of food from cloned animals and their offspring. Until the completion of those studies, it added, the ban on clones and their offspring should stay in place.
All that may be moot in light of the FDA decision, but it's too early to tell. We'll learn more as Congress crafts the final farm bill from the Senate and House versions.
There are other policies to watch. Studies by the European Union, Australia and New Zealand have affirmed the safety of food from clones. Some of the conclusions are cautious _ but they're still steps that bring us closer to trading cloned products.
Of course, tracking policies isn't the only thing concerned shoppers can do. You can buy meat and milk from companies that say they don't use the technology.Fresno Bee (California)
