By Angelique van Engelen
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published the details of
the outside consultants it has agreed to work with on its study of
cloned meat. If the outcome of study is positive, cloned meat could be
in the supermarkets here before 2010.
If the EU decides to follow the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
and allow cloned meat to enter supermarkets unlabeled, it is likely that
consumer opposition will be particularly strong in the UK. This
country?s strong anti GMO food lobby dates back to the 1990s, when there
was no GM labeling legislation. When companies started to use GMO
ingredients in their foods, consumers demanded labeling vehemently. ?Now
no supermarket or food company in the UK manufactures food using GM
ingredients simply because consumers refused to buy it?, says Claire
Oxborrow, Food Campaigner with Friends of the Earth in the UK. The
consumer action also helped formulate EU-wide GM labelling laws, which
enable consumers to continue to avoid GM ingredients.

The US FDA?s decision to okay meat of cloned farm animals to be sold in
shops unlabeled is said to be driven to a large extent by the motivation
that labeling creates consumer objections. The message that is preached
by the food authority is that meat of cloned animals is not any
different than regular meat and that labeling it is totally unnecessary.
This is contested by others however.

In Europe, consumer polls show that there is little to no enthusiasm for
bio engineered food in general and this is likely to extend to consumer
attitudes toward cloned meat too. The latest Eurobarometer poll?s
outcome compared to the same poll a few years before, shows that there
is virtually no shift in attitude on the issue. What?s more, the
research shows that it is not an issue that lacks trust because of lack
of government rules; European regulation doesn?t change the negative
attitude toward GM crops. In the UK, research conducted by WorldPanel
shows that a majority of shoppers at the supermarkets said that they
would actively avoid GM crops (see the graph).

The pressure group Friends of the Earth is currently extending the GM
foods campaign. It says that most of the UK supermarkets are already
selling ?contaminated? foodstuffs, because supermarkets that are selling
products of animals that have been fed on GMO crops.

UK citizens can go to a Friends of the Earth page and protest to their
supermarket directly.

When the issue of cloned meat first made news headlines in May 2006 as
?warranting regulatory attention? with the birth of the first calf of a
cloned cow Dundee Paradise, officials? first reactions were that
commercial cloning would likely not become a viable option and they
simply reiterated the incumbent rules. Yet the EU?s food safety watchdog
is putting up a regulatory framework just in case.

Some observers warn that with the passage of time, the regulatory action
could turn out to be the anticipation of real commercial cloning
practices. If other countries decide to market the meat in the EU,
regulatory framework needs to be in place, so the logic goes. Countries
like the US and Australia where there is a lot of interest in cloning,
show that commercial companies are overly keen to buy a cloning license.
US company ViaGen, a commercial cloning outfit which is nearly
profitable, says the prospects for achieving cost savings by
commercially cloned meat are very good.

There is significant opposition in the US to unlabeled cloned meat
however. When the US FDA (EFSA?s counterpart) decided to give its
preliminary okay to unlabeled cloned meat, after a similar study period,
the (US) Center for Food Safety, one of the critics, said the report was
"unnecessarily rushed" and "heavily influenced by industry." In a
statement, the organization added that the FDA had made use of
selectively reported data to fit predetermined conclusions.

The Food and Drug Administration, which is sometimes dubbed the Food
Dragging Association, makes no secret of this. John Matheson, an FDA
scientist, is quoted in a Washington Post article as saying ?We?re
spending a lot of time briefing [..], trying to make them comfortable
with the technology. I think that?s a microcosm of what you?re going to
see in the public when the decision goes out.?

A study by the US International Food Information Council (IFIC) shows
some shocking results. Under the headline ?Consumers remain opposed to
the notion of animal cloning, as well as the use of cloned animals for
breeding?IFIC lists this:

?Less than one-fifth (16%) of U.S. adults give a favorable rating for
their impression of animal cloning, while over half (56%) give an
unfavorable rating. Regarding the use of cloned animals for breeding
purposes, more consumers are neutral (36%) compared to those who are
neutral toward cloning (28%), and fewer are unfavorable (46%). Fewer
consumers state that they are ?not at all likely? to purchase foods from
cloned animals (30% vs. 35%), compared to 2005, as well as an increase
in those who are ?very likely? to purchase foods derived from the
offspring of cloned animals (9% vs. 4%), with safety assurances from
FDA. However, the majority remain unlikely to purchase foods from cloned
animals (58%) or their offspring (59%).?

The external advisers to the EU food safety watchdog come from various
backgrounds; there?s a mouse and rat cloning scientist from Hungary, a
UK food labeling expert from Assured Food Standards, some veterinarians
as well as an Italian professor who has been involved in GMO crops.

Below a list of details of a few members that make up the committee of
experts, plus their disclosures of personal interests. The committee is
scheduled to hand in its report before November this year;

- András Dinnyés, a Hungarian Wellcome Trust sponsored mouse and rat
cloning expert.

-The International Embryo Transfer Society. Represented by Larisa
Rudenko. She is a member of the Health and Safety Advisory Committee of
IETS and was also on the US FDA Centre for Veterinary Medicine /
government/ animal biotechnology.

- BIOprotein Technologies from France, which creates hyper powerful
vaccines (rotavirus) from transgenic Rabbit?s milk.

- Assured Food Standards UK, the organisation behind the RedTractor food
label, is also on the committee. It is represented by David Morton, who
is also a member of the Farm animal Welfare Council.

- The French INRA (national institute for agricultural research) is
represented by Pierre Le Neindre. He ticked his interests as
?agricultural industry, environment and human nutrition?; the focus
areas of INRA. Has advised the French government on animal welfare and
an experiments.

-The Italian professor Giuliano D?Agnolo, who?s involved in ?the
deliberate release of GMO crops? in the EU.

www.checkbiotech.org