Cloned Meat Could Be on Next Year's Us Christmas Menu

Ten years after the birth of the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, America was set yesterday to become the first country to introduce meat and milk from cloned cattle into the food supply.

After five years of study, the Food and Drug Administration, the government regulatory agency, yesterday ruled it saw no difference between conventionally raised farm animals and clones. The products of both were equally safe to eat.

"Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day," said Stephen Sundlof, director of veterinary medicine for the Food and Drug Administration. "There is just not anything there that is conceivably hazardous to the public health."

The FDA plans to hold public consultations until April. But cloned meat and milk could be on dinner tables by the end of 2007, without most Americans even noticing. Mr Sundlof said the FDA was unlikely to require labels telling consumers they were eating the products of clones.

That prospect has caused concern among environmental as well as food safety activists. "The FDA should regulate this more closely," said Joseph Mendelson, of the Centre for Food Safety. "While the FDA says no one has proved there is any danger from clones, the burden should be on the FDA to prove convincingly that they are safe."

The high cost of raising clones makes it unlikely that any will be introduced directly into the food supply, except the occasional dairy cow past the age of producing milk. The number of cloned cows, pigs and goats in the US is believed to be in the low hundreds.

But even with the FDA's all-clear, there remains considerable unease about the use of clones in agriculture. A poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology this year found 64% of Americans uncomfortable with the idea of eating food from clones. The life of Dolly did little to ease those concerns. Dolly suffered from arthritis and died at a relatively young age for a sheep in 2003. Research has since indicated that clones are born with more deformities and other complications.