Agro-Biotechnology: - The Greens | European Free Alliance

compared with those from healthy conventionally-bred animals.”
These conclusions were challenged by the Center for Food Safety. In their response
to the EFSA opinion (cited from EFSA 2008b), the Center for Food Safety
addresses some significant differences in the composition of meat and milk.
Therefore it called for further investigations:
“The significant differences in cloned milk composition revealed by these studies
raise serious concerns about whether milk from clones is safe for human
consumption. Without more data, and standards for which 'normal variations'
in protein and fatty acid compositions of meat and milk are safe, any conclusions
regarding the safety of food products derived from clones and their
progeny are premature.”
and:
“In our opinion, this conclusion can be extended to the more general case,
considering inter alia that the assessment of compositional analysis of meat
and milk from clones is based on a few studies that, in general, analyse small
samples.”
In the discussion about food safety one should not loose sight of the fact that
the EFSA (2008a) and the FDA (2008) mention a higher incidence of infections
in cloned farm animals compared to those derived from conventional breeding.
Thus products derived from those animals might also have a higher burden of
infectious agents. For example, investigations were carried out to examine whether
endogenous retrovirus (such as bovine endogenous retroviruses, BERV)
are activated by the cloning process (EFSA, 2009). However the EFSA (2008a)
raises some open questions in this context:
“Should evidence become available of reduced immunocompetence of clones
(...), it should be investigated whether, and if so, to what extent, consumption of
meat and milk derived from clones or their offspring may lead to an increased
human exposure to transmissible agents. ”
Many questions remain unanswered since the number of investigations is low
and the data presented are not generated according to any commonly approved
guidelines. It seems premature to make judgements on the particular relevance
of these observed differences to food safety.
Further investigations are necessary to judge the safety of these products.
Since effects depend on various factors such as the animal species, the protocols
used for cloning and environmental effects, it will be difficult to come up
with any comprehensive and final assessment.
Food Safety | Cloned farm animals - a ‚killing application‘? | 23