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Published online 2 January 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/451007a
Debate heats up over food from cloned animals
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Consumers should be given the choice whether or not they want to eat from cloned animals via product labeling. Until a generation or 2 of people have eaten clones animals, there is no way to predict that this is safe to eat.
Would some people be encouraged by the idea that it was really vintage meat ("I have a 50 year old veal you might find rather palatable") or discouraged by the idea that it was old?
Cloned animals may have frank physical defects, and these presumably reflect genetic and biochemical defects. How these relate to the safety of these foods is not clear, but certainly FDA's position that foods from clones are the same as foods from normal animals makes one wonder if their conclusions about safety are similarly improbable. S.M.W.
Given that incestuous breeding programs produce the animals that our community consumes it is difficult for the FDA to justify a distinction based on the known potential flaws of cloning.
Non cloned animals for human consume also have physical defects (i.e. the broad-dreasted turkey). Nevertheless, I think more research on the physiology and biochemistry of cloned animals is a real need, specially for animals for human consume. Although I believe the risk is low, people should be able to choose between vintage meat or cloned meat, just as they can choose between chicken or pork.