Have food products from cloned animals been approved for human consumption?
The FDA has asked for producers of cloned animals to voluntarily withhold these animals from the market while it reviews the evidence and forms a decision on how to regulate cloned animals. The FDA conducted a draft risk assessment in 2003 and determined that food products from cloned animals and their progeny “do not appear to pose increased food consumption risks relative to comparable products from conventional animals.” However, the FDA was premature in making this assessment, as the determination was based on only one study of cloned milk. There were no studies of cloned meat, and no long-term studies to determine the health consequences of consuming milk or meat from cloned animals. In fact, several members of the FDA’s own Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee stated that the data were insufficient to make an adequate assessment. The National Academy of Sciences also stated in a 2004 report that the safety of cloned food could not be asserted because “the paucity of evidence in
