FDA says cloned animals safe is food

WASHINGTON - Just over a decade after scientists cloned the first animal, the last major barrier to selling meat and milk from clones has fallen: The U.S. government declared this food safe Tuesday.

Now, will people buy it

Consumer anxiety about cloning is serious enough that several major food companies, including the big dairy producer Dean Foods Co. and Smithfield Foods Inc., say they aren't planning to sell products from cloned animals.

And the industry says most Americans would never eat a cloned animal for sheer economic reasons: At $10,000 to $20,000 per cloned cow — compared with $1,000 for an ordinary steer — they're too valuable. They would be used primarily for breeding, to produce a steady supply of cattle that are particularly tender, for instance, or for prize dairy cows. It would be offspring of clones that consumers would eat.

But it will be hard to tell which foods do contain ingredients originating from cloned animals. The Food and Drug Administration ruled that labels won't have to reveal whether the food comes from cloned cows, pigs or goats, or the clones' offspring, because those ingredients are no different than meat or milk from livestock bred the old-fashioned way.

"We found nothing in the food that could potentially be hazardous. The food in every respect is indistinguishable from food from any other animal," FDA food safety chief Dr. Stephen Sundlof said. "It is beyond our imagination to even find a theory that would cause the food to be unsafe."

Still, the government asked producers to continue a voluntary moratorium on sales of meat or milk from clones for a little longer, for marketing reasons. The Agriculture Department said it needed a transition period to get the safety findings to foreign trade partners and food companies.

"This is about market acceptance," USDA Undersecretary Bruce Knight said, adding that he expected this period to last months.

The two main U.S. cloning companies, Viagen Inc. and Trans Ova Genetics, already have produced more than 600 cloned animals for U.S. breeders, including copies of prize-winning cows and rodeo bulls. They agreed to USDA's call for a continued moratorium Tuesday, but stressed that it applied only to clones themselves, not those animals' conventionally produced offspring, which can begin selling immediately.

The FDA spent six years tracking the safety of cloning, and its decision was long expected, but it came after an emotional fight by opponents. Congress passed legislation last month urging further study of the issue, a call echoed by consumer advocates who also asked that foods from cloned animals be labeled as such.

Their objections aren't just about food safety but also include animal welfare since many attempts at livestock cloning still end in fatal birth defects.

"If you have moral objections to a particular food, or ethical objections to them, FDA's saying, 'Tough, you've got to eat it,'" said Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America, who pledged to push for more food producers to shun clone-derived ingredients.

"The FDA did not give adequate consideration to the welfare of these animals or their surrogate mothers," said Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the United States.

This was a day forecast since Scottish scientists in 1997 introduced the world to Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned animal. Ironically, sheep aren't on the list of FDA's approved cloned animals; the agency said there wasn't as much data about their safety as about cows, pigs and goats.

The FDA isn't alone in calling cloned food safe. European regulators last week issued a draft report reaching the same conclusion, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has found no cause for concern.

By its very definition, a successfully cloned

Iran says first cloned sheep thriving

Yahoo! News

ISFAHAN, Iran - Iranian scientists said Monday that the country's first cloned sheep is thriving 15 months after birth, eating well and frolicking among a flock of normal sheep. The cloned male sheep named Royana was born Sept. 30, 2006 in the historic central city of Isfahan, less than two months after the country's first cloned animal, also a lamb, died within minutes of birth.

But unlike it's predecessor, Royana survived the postnatal complications typical for cloned animals and is now celebrated as Iran's scientific breakthrough and achievement.

The effort is part of Iran's quest to become a regional high-tech powerhouse in western Asia by 2025. Tehran has also launched an ambitious space program, while its controversial uranium enrichment has the West worried it is masking Iran's attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

"Royana is a successful scientific achievement. We are all proud of it. The sheep is the result of many years of efforts in stem cell research," Mohammad Hossein Nasr e Isfahani, head of the Royan Research Institute in Isfahan told The Associated Press on Monday.

Isfahani, an embryologist whose team oversaw Royana's birth and that of its cloned predecessor, said his institute conducted 30 successful stem cell transfers but that only two led to birth.

His team members say that out of 10 animal cloning pregnancies, only one or two can be expected to lead to birth.

In 1996, British scientists made international headlines with Dolly, the first cloned sheep, which lived six years.

With Royana, Iran became the first country in the Middle East that publicly announced it cloned a sheep. Last September, Turkey reported cloning its first animal, also a sheep.

But rapid progress in stem cell research and genetics have raised widespread debates about ethics and the boundaries of medicine.

Scientists say the cloning — a process that creates a genetically identical copy — of sheep and other animals could lead to advances in medical research, including using cloned animals to produce human antibodies against diseases.

Iran's cloning program has won backing from the Shiite Muslim religious leaders, who have issued decrees authorizing animal cloning but banning human reproductive cloning. A majority of Iran's nearly 70 million people are Shiite Muslims.

In contrast, Sunni Muslim religious leaders — including senior clerics in Saudi Arabia — have banned cloning altogether, even in animals.

At a grazing land outside Isfahan, Royana was serenely frolicking about with some 400 other sheep. The herd and its shepherd were apparently not bothered by the fact the pasture was just 20 kilometers (14 miles) away from the Isfahan uranium conversion plant, one of the two main bases of the country's enrichment program.

"Royana is very powerful. He fights well to protect his realm in the pasture," said shepherd Abdolmalek Nourzehi.

Isfahani, the embryologist, said his institute plans more experiments in genetics and stem cell research in the future — using animal cells.

"We are now in the early stages of cloning a cow," he said. "It is not important for us how many animals we clone, what is important is that we have achieved proficiency in cloning."

Isfahani said Iranian researchers would never try to clone a human being because it's banned. "It is neither ethical nor allowed under our laws," he said.

Isfahani's institute has also a key role in preserving stem cells of endangered species.

"There is a type of sheep believed to be on the brink of extinction here," Isfahani said. "We keep their stem cells here to produce their copies if necessary some day."

اولین نشست موضوع شناسی فقهی و اخلاقی در بیوتکنولوژی

فراخوان دومين همايش ملي ايمني زيستي

اعضاي محترم  انجمن بیوتکنولوژی

 

سلام عليکم.

با احترام، به استحضار مي رساند انجمن ايمني زيستي در نظر دارد در راستاي رسالت تخصصي خود در ترويج و اشاعه مفاهيم ايمني زيستي دومين همايش ملي ايمني زيستي را در روزهاي يکم تا سوم خرداد ماه سال 1387 همزمان با دهمين کنگره ژنتيک در محل تهران، سالن همايش هاي رازي، جنب برج ميلاد برگزار نمايد. گفتني است اولين فراخوان اين همايش به زودي در اختيار اعضا قرار خواهد گرفت. از علاقمندان دعوت مي شود تا با حضور خود در اين همايش باعث  برگزار شدن آن با کيفيت بيشتر شوند.

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