Milk and meat from cloned animals
Published in The Hindu on January 11, 2007
When the team at Roslin Institute in Midlothian, U.K., successfully cloned Dolly, the world’s first cloned animal, in 1996, it was to develop and master a technique to produce unlimited number of identical copies of an animal of interest. Yet, when the news of Dolly’s birth broke out, all attention was on the technology’s potential to produce hundreds of cloned Hitlers and Mussolinis. While that never happened, cows, pigs, goats, horses and many other animals were cloned. Cloning technology is yet to be perfected though.
The approval
The next few years will possibly see this happening. The approval on December 28 last year by United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to market products derived from cloned animals cattle, goats and pigs in the U.S. has given researchers enough reason to work harder to perfect the technology.Marketing such products will be allowed after the formal process of allowing the public to comment on the approval.
A clone is produced by taking an adult cell from the animal to be cloned and inserting it into an egg that has its nucleus removed. Removing the nucleus from the egg ensures that the egg is stripped of any trace of DNA and the embryo that develops from such an egg will have only the genetic material of the animal to be cloned.
Low success rate
The success of this process is very low. Of the 277 eggs that were stripped of their DNA, only 29 became embryos and Dolly was the only live lamb that was born in the first successful cloning attempt. Though the current success rates are not known, they have not improved remarkably over the last ten years.
That cloned animals are riddled with a host of problems is also well known. But a few survive to adulthood and appear healthy. According to the FDA, there are no adverse outcomes seen in clones that are not seen in animals produced through other assisted reproductive technologies (ART).
The premise
The FDA has cleared food products derived from cloned animals on the premise that “healthy animals are likely to produce safe food products.”According to the report, a physically or otherwise deformed clone will die before birth or soon thereafter. Hence, any cloned animal that survives into adulthood and even reproduces should, by default, be healthy.
While “subtle hazards” of consuming food products from cloned animals that may otherwise appear healthy may exist, the report makes it clear that such hazards are no different from those seen in animals produced through other ARTs. With data on the health status of sheep clones not available, the FDA has not cleared them for human consumption. That data on sheep clones are still not available though a sheep (Dolly) was the first animal to be cloned is a bit surprising.
Even the data for goats, according to the report, is relatively small. So the FDA’s clearance of products from cloned goats is quite puzzling.
That it had the industry’s and not the consumers’ interests in mind to clear the products becomes apparent as it was convinced of their safety even in 2003 when supporting evidence was insufficient. The FDA had to hold back from giving a green signal then as the National Academy of Sciences, which was asked by the FDA to study the safety of products from cloned animals, wanted more data.
FDA’s assumption
With the cloning process being expensive, not to mention the small success rate, the FDA feels that the cloned animals or products derived from them, with the exception of milk, would not be made available to consumers. Instead the cloned `prize’ animals with some superior attributes would be used primarily for breeding and all products would come from “sexually-reproduced offspring and descendents of clones and not the clones themselves.”
No mandatory labelling
While clearing the products on safety grounds, the FDA has stated that these products would be subjected to the same laws and regulations as other conventional products. In sum, that is paving the way to market the products from cloned animals without making labelling mandatory.
Despite the FDA’s stand on safety, apprehensions about consuming such products still exist. A survey conducted a few months ago by the Washington D.C based Pew Institute on Food and Biotechnology found that nearly 65 per cent of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning. And 42-44 per cent felt that clone-based food is unsafe.
Other surveys have shown similar apprehension about cloning and safety of foods from cloned animals. The Pew Institute still feels that consumer education would go a long way in assuaging fear and uncomfortable feelings about cloning and products from cloned animals.
