Cloned foods pit scientists against consumers

Some companies have said that they will comply with consumers' wishes. Retailers Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Market have said that they won't carry cloned foods, and dairy companies Organic Valley Family of Farms and Dean Foods say that they won't use cloning technology.

One of the key issues to be decided is whether food from cloned animals will be labeled as such. The FDA has said that it doesn't think such a move is necessary, and supporters such as Simplot say it's important that labels are not used. But consumer opposition has led to political action in Washington — and that may mean cloned foods will be identified. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) has already introduced the Cloned Food Labeling Act. She says that consumers don't want cloned food and find it "repugnant."

Some scientists sound the alarm
There are some scientists on the side of the consumer activists. Rene Anand, an assistant professor of pharmacology at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, says cloning is "inbreeding of the worst kind."

He made the point in his public comment with the FDA. In an interview, Anand emphasizes that these are his personal views based on his own experience as a molecular biologist and are not the opinions of his university. He says that cloning will lead to inbred varieties of cattle that "could carry deadly mutant forms of natural proteins that could predispose humans to neurological diseases that would not be apparent for many decades." Anand says that the common practice of eating "rare" steaks poses the additional risk to human beings from protein variants that can be amplified due to cloning. He points out that mad cow disease was also caused by a protein. A disease outbreak could "wipe out huge herds of cloned genetically identical cattle, suddenly creating a food crisis at a unprecedented level," he says.

Still, Anand is in the minority of his profession. Among the hundreds of scientists who signed the statement from the Federation of Animal Science Societies is Ian Wilmut, widely regarded as the one of the main scientists who produced the first cloned sheep Dolly in 1996. Then there's Etherton, the Penn State academic who also sat on the National Academy of Sciences' panel on the safety of food derived from clones and their offspring. Says Etherton, "If Luddites dent the scientific methods and turn the lights out — we are not preserving a brighter future, rather heading toward a train wreck." Most folks expect the FDA to give final approval by the end of this year.

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