August 4, 2010

expert reaction to further coverage of cloned cow

In further developments on the cloned cow story, it has emerged that meat from the offspring of cloned cows has been sold and eaten in the UK.

Prof Keith Campbell, Professor of Animal Development at the University of Nottingham, said:

“Consumption of the milk or meat derived from healthy cloned animals or their offspring presents no dangers above the consumption of such products from non-cloned animals.”

Prof Grahame Bulfield, former director of the Roslin Institute where Dolly the sheep was cloned, said:

“I am very suprised at this and the FSA is just making itself very foolish – especially now it is following up offspring of offspring of clones! The FSA cannot produce any evidence that meat from clones or their offspring is novel in any way, or is any different to other meat. There is none, because it must be exactly the same.

“Of course animal welfare is a different issue but falls under the HO Animal Proceedures reguations and anyone cloning animals in the UK would need HO permission; as I understand it these animals were cloned in the US. There have been some cloned animals born with defects but this does not seem to affect cattle as much as other species.

“The offspring of cloned cattle (as these were) have not been experimented on and are born naturally and there are therefore no special animal procedures or welfare issues at all.”

Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, Head of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the National Institute for Medical Research, said:

“We are very used to propagating plants from cuttings, including many that are used to produce fruit that we eat. A plant from a cutting is a clone of the original plant. I expect that the vast majority of bananas we eat are clones. I am not going to say that this story is bananas, as there could be some other issues, such as whether or not FSA and EU regulations have been complied with, and about the welfare of the cows used to make the clones and the cloned cows themselves, although I suspect the latter were very well looked after as they are valuable (it may cost $15,000 to $20,000 to produce a cloned cow). As Abbie Hoffmann once said, sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.

“However, I can see no more danger in eating beef from the offspring of a cloned bull or cow (or of the clones themselves), than eating beef from cattle bred in conventional ways – although there are probably few ‘conventional’ pregnancies given that artificial insemination is already used frequently in cattle breeding. Indeed, as the point of cloning is to expand the number of high quality animals, it is quite possible that the meat will be better than usual.

“The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the USA also sees no problem as they declared in 2008 (in a 968 page report) that beef and milk from cloned animals could be consumed without any special labelling.”

Dr Brendan Curran, a geneticist from Queen Mary, University of London, said:

“In January 2008, following a five year analysis, the FDA in America announced that the meat and milk from cloned cows and their offspring were indistinguishable from the meat and milk of traditionally reproduced livestock. They have continued to review the evidence, and to date there has been no suggestion that these products are in any way distinguishable from one another. They have concluded therefore that it is safe for humans to consume produce from such animals.

“There is no reason why the situation should be any different in the UK. The real issue therefore is not about the wholesomeness of food products from such animals, but of animal welfare and how best to
regulate our food supply.”

Dr Piers Benn, a philosopher and medical ethicist, said:

“When people feel a deep unease about an innovation, but can’t quite defend or articulate their feelings, they often resort to objections based on health or safety. Their real worry is that cloning is ‘against nature’ and they think that, therefore, anything cloned must be defective or unsafe. But this doesn’t follow at all. Whether it is unsafe is an empirical, scientific matter. Whether something is ‘unnatural’ and therefore wrong is a different sort of question.”

Extended statement from Prof Sir Ian Wilmut, Director of the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine: Is meat or milk from cloned animals or their offspring safe to eat? In order to make their assessment of the safety of food from cloned animals the U.S. regulatory agency, the Food and Drug Administration, completed a detailed analysis of all of the cloned animals born in the USA before the time of their study in 2007. Detailed independent analyses were made of the composition of milk and meat from cloned animals and their offspring. As a measure of the basic metabolism of the animals they also monitored blood composition. These measurements in clones were compared with measurement from genetically very similar animals raised on the same farms. They also took note of all of the relevant information available from other countries. After extensive analyses, they concluded that they could find no difference between healthy cloned animals and genetically similar animals produced by normal reproduction. (see http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/AnimalCloning/ucm055513.htm for a summary). This evidence, combined with our understanding about the basic biology of cloning, would support the conclusion that food from clones or their offspring is safe to eat. The production of cloned animals By contrast, there is a clear reason to be concerned about the use of cloning in animal breeding. The production of cloned animals with the present procedures is associated with a greater than normal death of foetuses during pregnancy, difficulties at birth and death of animals after birth. The precise frequency and nature of these disturbing effects varies from one species to another and may vary with the cloning procedure that is used. The significance of these abnormalities is viewed differently in the USA and Europe. In this country and the rest of Europe it is judged that the benefits in animal breeding that are gained by the use of cloning do not justify the risk of causing suffering to the animals. By contrast, in the USA cloning in agriculture is accepted. Hence embryos from cloned animals, such as those that were used in the present case, are available for import into the UK. Thus, while the scientific evidence seems to confirm that cloned meat and milk are safe, large-scale agricultural cloning raises troubling ethical concerns about animal welfare.