A Freedom of Information Act request from the Center for Food Safety together with several other groups has turned up a report commissioned by the FDA descriptively titled “Focus Groups on the Public’s Perception on the Health Risk Associated with Products from Animal Clones”.

Not surprisingly, more than half of the participants stated that they would not want to eat food derived from cloned animals, and all of the parents surveyed said thay would not give such food to their children.

Perhaps surprisingly, the FDA commissioned the report well before it issued its risk assessment approving food from cloned animals and their offspring for human consumption. No labeling or tracking required.

For more about the FDA's decision, see our previous blog posting.

Source: Food Law Prof Blog; Center for Food Safety

Labels: biotechnology, cloned animals, FDA

The FDA has issued a controversial report concluding that foods from healthy cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as those from ordinary animals. Even more controversially, the FDA does not call for such meat to be labeled or tracked. As reported in the Washington Post, this removes the last U.S. regulatory barrier to the marketing of meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats. In response to the FDA report, the Center for Food Safety issued a statement blasting the FDA's "irresponsible determination," and urging passage of the 2007 Farm Bill, as amended, which would delay the FDA's release of cloned animals into the food supply pending further study.

Sources: beSpacific; Food Law Prof Blog; The Washington Post

Labels: biotechnology, cloned animals, FDA