Cloned Food: More Study Needed

Will Clone for Food continued...

In the U.S., several hundred cattle have been cloned, says rancher and veterinarian Donald Coover, DVM, of Galesburg, Kan. Cloned pigs, goats, and sheep may join them some day on America's dinner table.

Five of the cattle clones were described as "normal and healthy as any calves I've ever raised," says Coover in an FDA news release. The calves, born in 2001, will soon be ready to propagate herds of high-quality beef cattle.

"Clones are biological copies of normal animals," Larisa Rudenko, PhD, a molecular biologist and risk assessor in the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, says in a news release. "In theory, they're pretty close to identical twins of an adult animal."

Indeed, over the last two years, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has found that food products derived from animal clones and their offspring are likely to be as safe as food from their nonclone counterparts.

The NAS found that healthy adult animal clones are virtually indistinguishable from "normal" animals, based on the evidence available.

It's unlikely that you will eat a cloned animal anytime soon. At a cost of $20,000 each to produce, clones are used for breeding -- not for food. But some scientists and farmers are looking at the descendants of cloned cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep as potential sources for food and clothing, if the FDA gives the OK.