The United States Government’s declaration yesterday that food from cloned animals is safe to eat and does not require special labelling sparked concern within the Jamaican Government and the main local consumer organisation about the implications the decision could have for Jamaica, which imports meat from that country.

Yesterday in Washington, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that at the end of a five-year study it had concluded that cloned livestock is “virtually indistinguishable” from conventional livestock, and as such no identification is needed to judge their safety for the food supply.

The FDA believes “that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day,” said Stephen F Sundlof, director of the FDA Centre for Veterinary Medicine.

Food from the offspring of cloned animals is equally safe, Sundlof said.

But in Kingston, Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke expressed concern at the announcement, which, he said, will have significant implications for Jamaica’s meat supply.

“If the US has now declared that eating cloned animals is not a problem, then it is something that we will have to look more into and decide what to do because this will have far-reaching implications for us,” Clarke told the Observer in a telephone interview.

Clarke was, however, unable to say how the Jamaican Government will react if and when the unlabelled cloned animal products hit the market, as he had not yet received any official word out of the US.

He said he will be doing some further consultation to determine what will now happen in light of the fact that no special label would be required for these products.

“I will actually have to do some serious consultation about that because it is something that we will have to look at in great detail,” he said. “It is too early to say what all the implications will be, but I do know it will have great implications for us.”

Approximately 66 per cent of the 628,242 kilograms beef imported to Jamaica monthly come from the USA, data from the agriculture ministry show. The Observer was unable to obtain data for pork and goat meat.

Dolsie Allen, chief executive officer at the Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC), also expressed concern that these products may not be labelled.

“Our problem is that we do not have enough information to say if this is dangerous or not, so all we are asking for is full disclosure so that consumers will know what they are doing and can make an informed decision to buy this product or not,” she said.

She also questioned why, if nothing is different about foods from cloned animals, consumers would be denied the right to know what they are eating.

“We are concerned about these cloned animals because we believe that once you go against nature there must be something that you would have to do differently that could be hazardous to health, and the basic rights of the consumer is that you must be protected against hazardous or unsafe product,” said Allen.

To produce a clone, the nucleus of a donor egg is removed and replaced with the DNA of a cow, pig or other animal. A tiny electric shock coaxes the egg to grow into a copy of the original animal. Cloning companies say it’s just another reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination, yet there can be differences between the two because of chance and environmental influences.

Allen said the CAC will be encouraging Jamaican consumers to get as much information despite the FDA’s safety assurance. “We want consumers to get as much information because even though we cannot prove if it is unsafe we still have concerns and must be given the choice.”

She likened the cloned meat to Genetically Engineered Organisms (GMOs) which, she said, are done mainly for economic reasons.

“We believe also that some of these decisions are purely economic. as in the case of the GMOs …you get the corn and potato and tomatoes and many of us don’t know they are GMOs,” she said.

Allen pointed to the fact that the consumer international headquarters in London has always been lobbying for the food from cloned animals to be specially labelled, and as such she is awaiting a report from them, given this new decision.

Critics of cloning say the verdict is still out on the safety of food from cloned animals. “Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and has a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labelling,” said Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Centre for Food Safety.

Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows that cloning results in more deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive technologies.

She said that the consumer federation will ask food companies and supermarkets to refuse to sell food from clones.

“Meat and milk from cloned animals have no benefit for consumers and consumers don’t want them in their foods,” Foreman was quoted by The Associated Press as saying.

However, FDA scientists said that by the time clones reached 6 to 18 months of age, they were virtually indistinguishable from conventionally bred animals.

“Labels should only be used if the health characteristics of a food are significantly altered by how it is produced ,” The AP quoted Barb Glenn of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation.

“The bottom line is, we don’t want to misinform consumers with some sort of implied message of difference,” Glenn said, adding that there is no difference as these foods are as safe as foods from animals that are raised conventionally. Final approval of cloned animals for food is months away as the FDA will accept comments from the public after issuing a draft risk assessment next Thursday.

Cloning lets farmers and ranchers make copies of exceptional animals, such as pigs that fatten rapidly or cows that are superior milk producers.

“It is not a genetically engineered animal, no genes have been changed or moved or deleted,” Glenn said. “It is simply a genetic twin that we can use for future matings to improve the overall health and well-being of the herd. Thus consumers will mostly get food from their offspring and not the clones themselves,” she said.

Still some clones would eventually end up in the food supply. As with conventional livestock, a cloned bull or cow that outlived its usefulness would probably wind up at a hamburger plant, and a cloned diary cow would be milked during her breeding years.

Approval of cloned livestock has taken five years because of pressure from big food companies nervous that consumers might reject milk and meat from cloned animals.

additional reporting by The Associated Press