Cloned Animal Meat
Q: The FDA recently announced cloned animals are safe to eat. What’s
the basis for this claim?
A: It might be hard to believe, but none of the more than 700
studies reviewed by the FDA revealed any reason to be concerned with milk and
meat from healthy cloned cows, pigs, and goats -- or from their offspring. And
the FDA isn’t the first to make this claim: Both the National Academy of
Science and the European Food Safety Authority came to similar conclusions.
The FDA also found the chemical composition of food products from cloned
animals is virtually identical to that of conventionally bred animals. But
there might be other reasons to be cautious. Cloned animals would be used
primarily as breeders, not as food, but cloning is expensive and ultimately
inefficient: Many clones die during gestation or shortly after birth; many
others are born deformed.
These problems -- combined with widespread ethical qualms -- led the U.S.
Department of Agriculture to ask farmers to delay marketing cloned food
products until consumers complete "a process of acceptance." That means you
probably won’t be throwing burgers made from cloned animals on the grill this
Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD/LD, WebMD Nutrition Expert