WASHINGTON — The European Food Safety Authority Friday said it has concluded that meat and milk from healthy cloned cattle and pigs is “very unlikely” to pose risks to consumers, opening the door to possible European sales of those controversial foods in the future.
The highly anticipated draft scientific opinion of the European agency comes just days before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is due to release its final report on the same topic, which is expected to come to virtually the same conclusion. Some backers of the fledgling agricultural cloning industry have said they hoped that a positive report from Europe might ease the process of gaining acceptance by American consumers.
It remains unclear, however, whether the European Union will ultimately approve the sale of cloned products, and if so under what conditions.
Unlike the case in the United States, such decisions in Europe are required by law to incorporate social and ethical considerations. And the European public broadly supports the so-called precautionary principle, which calls for society to err on the side of caution when risks are uncertain.
Moreover, the European agency, which provides scientific advice to the European Commission, notes in its report that many cloned farm animals have health problems, including life-threatening physiological abnormalities. In Europe, where animal welfare is a much higher profile issue than it is in the United States, that reality could also become a stumbling block.
The 47-page report concludes, however, that cloned animals with health problems would be screened out by traditional food inspection methods. And echoing earlier assertions by the FDA, it finds that milk and meat from healthy clones are as nutritious and safe to eat as milk and meat from ordinary animals.
“Based on current knowledge there is no expectation that clones or their progeny would introduce any new food safety risks compared with conventionally bred animals,” the report says.
It also finds that clones have no unique health problems, only a higher rate of problems seen in conventional animals. That offers hope that with technical advances those issues will gradually disappear, the report says.
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