Experts Debate Cloned Food

The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2002 report identifies reduction in genetic diversity as a direct, indisputable result of animal cloning and identifies specific risks associated with it. The NAS report warned that in cloned livestock: "disease could spread through susceptible populations more rapidly than through more genetically diverse populations. This...concern is well documented and several studies illustrate the susceptibility of species with low genetic diversity to infectious disease."

The FDA Risk Assessment barely discusses this risk to animal health and does not cite any studies specific to how cloning would decrease genetic diversity or increase susceptibility to disease. The FDA ignored the possible environmental effects of cloning and dismissed the threat to genetic diversity by saying that it does not regulate animal breeding.

None of the studies that the FDA reviewed looked at the effect of cloning on genetic diversity. Still, given that cloned animals have been born sicker than normal animals, the FDA should have required studies on the effects of cloning on microbial resistance in the clones. The FDA asserts that all ill animals would be found in the animal inspection process. The assumption that sick cloned animals will be removed from the food system is not borne out by the recent experience of the slaughterhouse-Hallmark/Westland-in California. The public will expect even greater ability on the part of both importing and exporting countries to prevent ill cloned animals from entering the food chain.

Research studies presented in the FDA document the presence of infectious disease in cloned livestock, but are largely ignored under the assumption that they cause early death. For example, Park et al. (2005) reported that 22 of 35 live born cloned pigs died within one week of various infectious diseases in including cerebromeningitis and possibly E.coli, Salmonella, Streptococcus and other bacteria. FDA did not assess the food safety risks presented by the presence of these bacterial agents or other infectious diseases. Instead, the Risk Assessment relies on the assumption that diseased animals will not enter the food supply, although the FDA gives no plan for how such animals will be identified and culled.

The FDA failed to address whether potentially hazardous infectious disease agents could go undetected or could enter the food supply by other means (i.e. from contact with fecal matter) and if they can, whether the use of cloning technology could increase the risk of food contamination.

This is a risk, certainly, but probably not as serious as it seems at first glance.

Throughout history, breeders of domestic animals have selectively bred those animals to produce the most useful product, that is, the product most in demand by consumers. To that end, breeders have narrowed the gene pool of those animals (those breeds) intentionally so they don't get less useful animals. In other words, animal breeders already try to create a genetically non-diverse food supply. And these animals are more susceptible to disease epidemics, environmental stressors, etc.

Farmers and ranchers have learned to deal with the advantages and the disadvantages of purebred animals, and modern developments like vaccinations, and so on, have helped avoid disease epidemics.

Interestingly, the ability to "store" genetics in frozen cell lines may allow us to maintain genetics for future use that may have been lost because no one could afford to keep live animals around that were not currently useful. We can now clone from frozen cell lines, and so could possibly revive for future use animals that would have been lost.