- Food from cloned farm animals is heading towards dinner
tables, after being cleared by America's top scientific body.
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- US farmers already have cloned cattle, pigs and sheep
and have been waiting for official clearance before putting their milk
and meat on the market. Experts say that once cloned food goes on sale
in America, probably as soon as next year, it will be extremely hard to
stop it being exported to Britain.
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- Animal welfare experts are deeply alarmed at the prospect
of what they describe as "the ultimate in factory farming", because
studies show that cloning inflicts particularly great suffering.
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- Today is the Church of England's first Animal Welfare
Sunday, an annual event on which Anglicans will be asked to speak out against
cruel farming and switch to organic or free-range food.
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- Millions of shoppers are bound harbour suspicions about
cloned food, after the widespread rejection of GM produce - but the Food
Standards Agency admits that it would not automatically be labelled.
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- The new report - by the US National Academy of Sciences
- concluded that there is no evidence that cloned produce poses "a
food safety concern". Dr Kim Waddell, director of the two-year study,
told the Independent on Sunday late last week: "We cannot envisage
any problem from a theoretical standpoint, and there is nothing to suggest
that there would be one."
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- Though cautiously worded, and accompanied by calls for
further studies, this assurance is likely to lead the US Government's Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) - which commissioned the report - to give
cloned food the go-ahead over the next few months.
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- Cloning has progressed rapidly since the creation of
Dolly the sheep at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute five years ago. Now at
least 14 firms in the US, Japan, Canada and Australia - mainly linked with
universities - are carrying it out commercially. One company - Prolinia,
in Athens, Georgia - has even successfully cloned a cow after it had been
slaughtered. It boasts: "This breakthrough has the potential to revolutionise
beef cattle production by allowing producers to select cells from the highest
quality meat, after it has been graded, to clone animals to stock their
herd."
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- Producers say milk, butter and cheese from cloned animals
is likely to be the first food to go on sale, probably next year. Meat
would probably first be produced from the offspring of clones, because
the technique is expensive, but this could change as costs fell. Veal from
offspring could again go on sale next year, and pork the year after.
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- Animal welfare charities are appalled at the prospect
of the technology spreading. They point out that many cloned embryos abort
and that many that are born alive have health defects: Dolly has developed
arthritis. And they add that breeding herds of identical animals would
leave them particularly susceptible to disease.
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- Julia Wrathall of the RSPCA said: "We can see no
benefit at all from going down this road. Animals would presumably be cloned
for high production, and they are already being pushed beyond the limit."
She said the Government failed to implement recommendations from official
inquiries for controls on the technology.
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- US farmers have been pouring away milk from cloned cattle,
after being asked by the FDA voluntarily to not sell it until there is
an official ruling.
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- The Government says that Britain has no specific laws
controlling produce from cloned animals, though it would have to be shown
to be the same as its conventional counterpart. That, by definition, is
what cloning produces.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=339887
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