Will you eat cloned meat and milk?
Cloned animals meat and milk could soon enter the EU market according to the outcome of a European Food Safety Authority scientific review.
EFSA informed that the European Commission had requested it to advise on the possible implications of animal cloning on food safety, animal health and state of the environment.
Cloning could give meat of better quality and other products, such as milk. It offers the possibility of creating species of animals with increased resistance to disease.
However consumer resistance is going to create a problem, as it happed in the case of genetically-modified foods.
Presently in Europe cloning is not a commercial activity and there is no specific laws on the authorization of food products from cloned animals for human consumption in the EU.
EFSA’s report, which is planed to be produced within six months, will therefore inform any future EU decisions on cloned animals and their products.
In the US, debate around this issue gathered at once, after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inform about its plans to approve cloning for food production later this year.
The US authorities have issued a consultation proposing to allow the product into the food industry without the need for additional labeling. But independent studies in the US indicate that 60 per cent of Americans would not consciously eat cloned meat. Europeans also were generally against any new foods that had been produced through new scientific technologies - such as GMOs.