Cloned milk and meat: What's the beef?

Inbreeding problem
The main concern that scientists actually had in the 2002 NAS report, according to Muir, was not the effect of cloned products on humans, but the health of the animals themselves.

Young animals were of particular concern because their immune systems tended to be more stressed, and there was more risk of them shedding pathogens if they were used for meat (in veal, for example). But studies and advances in the last five years have answered many of these concerns, Muir said.

Some worry that cloning would create a "monoculture" that is susceptible to diseases because it has no genetic variation (as is the case with some genetically modified crops). But as Muir points out, American dairy cows today are so inbred that "we already have that problem, and cloning is not going to make it worse."

Some lines of dairy cows are bred from just a few bulls and are selected for their high milk production, but such a high level of inbreeding means they have weak immune systems and so they are fed antibiotics (which many consumer groups also object to) because they have such high rates of infection.

According to Roberts, of all the genetic methods that the NAS risk assessment examined, "we felt the least risk was actually from cloned animals."

What to expect
Concerns aside, it seems likely that the FDA's approval is imminent and inevitable.

Would an FDA approval this week mean that meat and milk from cloned cows would be on the shelves tomorrow? Probably not, most experts say.

The first product to enter the market would be cow's milk. Already, some 500 cloned dairy cows are ready to produce milk, Muir says.

But its not clear when any of the milk would become available. Many milk producers, such as Dean Foods Co., have said they won't use milk from cloned cows, largely because of consumer backlash.

Meat deriving from cloned cows would take longer to make it to market, and because the clones would likely be used as breeders and not butchered for their meat (since they would cost up to $20,000 a pop), "it's unlikely that most consumers would eat a clone directly," Faber said.

Consumers would likely eat the offspring of breeding clones, because breeders aren't interested in clones for their milk or meat, but for their genes, Faber said.

For farmers, cloning is a way to preserve the genes of their best animals, Muir said. A farmer may breed a bull with several of his cows, but won't know how well the offspring will perform until they are grown, at which point the bull may be gone.

In this way, cloning acts as an "insurance program" for breeders, Muir says, allowing them to preserve the genes of cows and bulls to create a clone for later breeding.

"You're putting him on ice and saving him for later," Muir said.

Some meat companies have echoed dairy producers in saying they would not use cloned meat, Hanson said, because of consumer concerns.

No warning label for cloned milk
Roberts says that labeling cloned milk or meat so that consumers could avoid it is unlikely — the FDA has not mentioned it in any of their draft assessments. He says the task would be almost impossible, since the milk that you pour into your cereal isn't just from one cow. And while he thinks the public has a right to know where its food comes from, "we know that this milk and these meats are perfectly safe," he said.

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Why concerns persist despite studies that deem cloned milk and meat safe to consume is something that Muir, Roberts and Faber chalk up to fear of change and the novelty of the cloning process and its implications for humans. Faber says there was similar resistance to using artificial insemination to breed animals and even to pasteurizing milk.

Cloned livestock "should have been approved years ago," Roberts said. "It isn't the science that's held things up. It's the reaction of the public."

Muir thinks people are made uncomfortable because of the slippery slope from animal cloning to human cloning. "We're coming closer to playing God," he said.

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