Thursday, October 06, 2005
Favorable FDA Ruling Seen as Imminent
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 6, 2005; Page A01
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to rule soon that milk from cloned animals and meat from their offspring are safe to eat, raising the question of whether Americans are ready to welcome one of modern biology's most controversial achievements to the dinner table.
Hundreds of cloned pigs, cows and other animals are already living on farms around the country, as companies and livestock producers experiment and await a decision from the FDA.
Elvis, a calf cloned by ViaGen Inc. of Austin and groomed for breeding.
Elvis, a calf cloned by ViaGen Inc. of Austin and groomed for breeding. (By Carol Guzy -- The Washington Post)
Photos
/nation Grade D-N-A
Companies say they're ready to turn cloning into a routine tool of production agriculture.
From Science Fiction to Fact
Clones abound in nature, including human identical twins. Scientists created artificial clones from embryo cells starting in 1894, but adult mammals weren't cloned until 1996. Farm animals have been cloned by the hundreds recently, and companies want to use them in food production. Mammal cloning milestones:
1996: Dolly the sheep (made public in 1997)
1998: Mice, cattle
1999: Goats
2000: Pigs cloned; using mice, clones of clones are produced
2002: Rabbits, cats
2003: Horses, rats
2004: Adult human cloned to create embryos, which are destroyed to extract cells
2005: Dog
SOURCES: ViaGen Inc.; Washington Post research
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The agricultural industry has observed a voluntary FDA moratorium on using the products of clones, but it has recently become clear that a few offspring of cloned pigs and cows are already trickling into the food supply.
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