GM Debate: Cloned Meat Safe to Eat Says Eu's Food Agency

Beef and pork produced from healthy cloned cattle and pigs are as safe as meat from conventionally bred animals, the European Food Safety Authority said yesterday.

But the EU's food safety agency, giving its long-awaited final scientific opinion on animal cloning, said animals carrying cloned embryos, and their offspring, had significantly higher health and welfare risks - and cloned animals died earlier.

Vittorio Silano, who chairs EFSA's scientific committee, said food safety concerns for cloned cattle and pigs were considered unlikely but the evidence base, while consistent, was still small. The agency stopped short of saying cloned meat was safe.

The European commission, the final arbiter on the commercialization of food from cloned animals, is under political pressure to give the go-ahead after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs and goats are safe to eat.

In an initial reaction the commission said the report "gives rise to increased concerns on aspects of animal health and welfare" and left open questions of food safety. Its ethical advisers said earlier this year they saw no convincing arguments to justify the production of cloned meat.

The issue, like that of genetically modified food and seeds, is one of the most contentious and emotive within the EU and the commission is delaying its findings at least until the results of a poll of all 27 member states are published in the autumn.

Polls of British and American consumers suggest they oppose the use of cloned meat but the UK and Germany are pushing for it to be allowed in the EU. Proponents argue that cloned animals will produce more milk and leaner meat.

Silano said EFSA found that few cloned embryos - around 5% - went to term and up to 40% of offspring emerged with severe health problems, many of them dying within the first six months.

Professor Dan Collins, a member of EFSA's scientific committee, told reporters that there was no appreciable difference between meat from cloned animals and that from conventional ones. But he added: "There are possible concerns there is an impact of animal health and welfare on food safety. Infectious diseases can be passed down the food chain. Healthy food comes from healthy animals."

Sonja van Tichelen, director of Eurogroup for Animals, a pan-European body of animal welfare organizations, said: "The science is now there. The evidence is clear: there are problems with it.

"Conventional methods work so there is no need to approve cloning which would cause so many animals to suffer and die."

EFSA said it knew of no commercial market for cloned meat within the EU but semen was traded for research purposes.