The US Government has decided that food from cloned animals is safe to eat and does not require special labelling.

The Food and Drug Administration planned to brief industry groups in advance of an announcement yesterday (local time). The regulatory agency indicated it would approve cloned livestock in a scientific journal article published online earlier this month.

Consumer groups say labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with the idea of cloned livestock.

However, FDA regulators concluded that cloned animals are "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock and that no identification is needed to judge their safety for the food supply.

"Meat and milk from clones and their progeny is as safe to eat as corresponding products derived from animals produced using contemporary agricultural practices," FDA scientists Larisa Rudenko and John C. Matheson wrote in the January 1 issue of Theriogenology.

Labels should only be used if the health characteristics of a food are significantly altered by how it is produced, said Barb Glenn of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

"The bottom line is, we don't want to misinform consumers with some sort of implied message of difference," Glenn said. "There is no difference. These foods are as safe as foods from animals that are raised conventionally."

Critics of cloning say the verdict is still out on the safety of food from cloned animals.

"Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and has a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labelling," said Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Centre for Food Safety.

Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows cloning results in more deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive technologies.

The consumer federation will ask food companies and supermarkets to refuse to sell food from clones, she said.

"Meat and milk from cloned animals have no benefit for consumers, and consumers don't want them in their foods," Foreman said.

The FDA scientists wrote that by the time clones reached six to 18 months of age, they were virtually indistinguishable from conventionally bred animals.

Final approval of cloned animals for food is months away; the FDA will accept comments from the public after issuing a draft risk assessment yesterday.

Approval of cloned livestock has taken five years because of pressure from big food companies nervous that consumers might reject milk and meat from cloned animals.

Some surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with food from cloned animals; 64 per cent said they were uncomfortable in a September poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonpartisan research group.

(China Daily 12/29/2006 page6)