Food from cloned animals: Singapore to conduct own review, says AVA

Straits Times 17 Jan 08;

ASIA'S food safety and agriculture authorities said that they would conduct their own checks on the safety of cloned food, following the US government's declaration on Tuesday to allow meat and milk from cloned animals into the food supply.

In Singapore, the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) plans to do its own risk assessment on such products, spokesman Goh Shih Yong told The Straits Times.

Singapore's beef imports amounted to 24,385 tonnes last year, with US beef making up just 1.5 per cent of that figure - or 374 tonnes, the AVA said.

Before the 2003 ban on US beef in Singapore, about 5 per cent of the Republic's 18,393 tonnes of beef imports that year came from the US.

The authorities in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, which was the largest overseas market for US beef in value terms in 2003, have said that their countries will need to conduct their own reviews on the issue.

Asia, which was the destination of 55 per cent of all US beef exports in 2003, remains a lucrative market for the meat, although some countries, including South Korea, have kept a ban on US beef imports after the US case of mad cow disease.

REUTERS

Already on our plates?
Straits Times 17 Jan 08;

WHILE many of America's biggest grocers are dead set against the idea of selling cloned products, food from the offspring of clones may already be on the market, said cattle cloning industry officials.

Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies conceded on Tuesday that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply chain, despite a years-old request by the Food and Drug Administration to keep them off the market pending completion of the agency's safety report.

And food which comes from the offspring of clones can be used for everything from the milkshakes served by restaurants to the steaks sold in supermarkets - without any special labelling.

At least one Kansas cattle producer also came forward on Tuesday to say that he has openly sold semen from prize-winning clones to countless US meat producers in the past few years, and that he is certain he is not alone.

'This is a fairy tale that this technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain,' said Mr Donald Coover, a Galesburg, Kansas, cattleman and veterinarian who has a speciality cattle semen business.

'Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or they're not being honest.'

WASHINGTON POST

To eat or not to eat?
Straits Times 17 Jan 08;

US agencies send mixed signals on safety of food from such sources
WASHINGTON - CONSUMERS in the United States have received a plateful of mixed messages as the US food safety authority declared food from cloned animals and their offspring to be safe, while farmers were told by the Agriculture Department to keep such animals off the market.

The ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was the latest twist after years of debate over the reproductive technology, which advocates say will provide consumers with top-quality food by replicating prized animals that can breed highly productive offspring.

Mr Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Centre for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, who oversaw a six-year review of the safety of food from clones and their offspring, said: 'Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day.'

The FDA said that it did not have enough facts to make an assertion about cloned sheep.

In a controversial move, the agency also said that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring would not be labelled because it was the same as conventional food and did not pose a safety risk, despite a programme launched by US biotechnology firms last month to track cloned cattle and pigs.

Awkwardly meshed announcements by the FDA and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials, made at a joint news conference on Tuesday, reflected continuing divisions among US food-related agencies on how to deal with the cloned-food issue.

Farmers have long held back from selling cloned foods, and on Tuesday, USDA said this state of affairs should continue, pending consultations on introducing these foods into the market.

'USDA is encouraging the technology producers to maintain their voluntary moratorium on sending milk and meat from animal clones into the food supply,' USDA official Bruce Knight told reporters.

But the FDA decision to let cloned products into the food chain was hailed by cloning companies and some farmers, who hope to turn cloning into a routine agricultural tool.

As clones are costly, they will be used primarily for breeding, not for producing meat and milk.

But some US consumer groups suggested that the American public would be as tough a sell as the 'Frankenfood'-averse consumers in the European Union and Japan.

A September 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64 per cent of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning. FDA focus groups found that a third of consumers would never eat food from cloned animals.

A number of US groups have also demanded that food from clones be labelled as such, so that consumers can exercise a 'right to choose'.

Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, who is among a group of lawmakers pushing for a delay on the cloned-food issue until further studies are completed, accused the FDA of acting 'recklessly' on Tuesday.

'If we discover a problem with cloned food after it is in our food supply and it's not labelled, the FDA won't be able to recall it...the food will already be tainted,' she said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST


How cloning works
Straits Times 17 Jan 08;

WHEN scientists explain the practice of cloning livestock, they describe clones as genetic twins born at different times.

Cloning companies say it is just another reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination.

Here is how cloning works: Scientists take an immature egg, usually from a cow that went to the slaughterhouse, and remove the nucleus. They add DNA from a donor cow, often taken from the skin cell of a ear, and a tiny electric shock coaxes the egg to start dividing and grow into a copy of the original animal. The egg is then implanted into a surrogate animal for gestation and birth.

The first mammal cloned from an adult cell was Dolly the sheep in 1997.

ASSOCIATED PRESS