States Move to Label Cloned Food

After the FDA refused to require labels for cloned food, some state legislatures are drafting laws to respond to consumers' demands

by Pallavi Gogoi

The debate over cloned food in the past year has been ferocious. As the Food & Drug Administration weighed whether to allow food from cloned animals into the country's food supply, more than 30,000 public comments flooded in, with the overwhelming majority opposed to the move. Lea Askren, one consumer who wrote to the agency, called the practice "unethical, disturbing, and disgusting." Yet on Jan. 15, the FDA sided with the scientists who have researched the issue, saying that meat and milk from cloned animals are "as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals."

Now comes the real battle: Will consumers be able to tell which milk or meat on their supermarket shelves is from cloned animals or their offspring?

Industry Opposes Strict Laws

As part of its ruling, the FDA decided not to require labels. But several states are taking the opposite tack. At least 13 bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country—including California, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Kentucky—that call for words or symbols alerting shoppers to the presence of cloned foods.

The language in all the bills is similar—and strong. For instance, the Kentucky House bill introduced on Jan. 28, by Representative Jim Glenn (D) says: "No person shall sell, offer or expose for sale, have in his possession for sale, or give away, for human consumption, any fresh or frozen meat, meat preparation, meat by-product, dairy food or dairy food product, or poultry or poultry product derived from a cloned animal or its offspring unless the product is clearly and conspicuously labeled as such." In an interview, Glenn says: "Just like we know whether salmon is farm-raised or from the ocean, a consumer should know whether the meat is from a clone or not."

These bills are strongly opposed by the biotech and livestock industry, which are pinning their hopes on the cloning technology to replicate the highest quality meat and milk in the industry for mass consumption. "The public will be completely alarmed with labels that say it's cloned food, and no one will buy it," says Donald Coover, a veterinarian from Galesburg, Kan., who conducts cloned-embryo transfers for farmers that raise cattle for meat and milk. He believes that labeling will kill the business before it starts.

GM Food Labels

Some food experts agree. "The problem with labeling is that it implies that something is wrong with the food," says William Hallman, director of the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University. "Just like a label warns of peanuts, a label on cloned foods will be interpreted as a warning."

In fact, if past battles over genetically modified food are any indication, clone-labeling requirements may never see the light of day. After genetically modified food was given the green light by the federal government in 1992, at least 16 states introduced bills that called for labeling of such food. None of them became law. Only one bill in Vermont was passed; it required labeling, not of food but of seeds, to help farmers. And in 2005, Alaska passed legislation requiring labels for transgenic fish.

Still, consumer advocates are hopeful. They believe that unlike genetically engineered food, cloning is still a nascent technology that can be easily tracked. "State legislators are more willing to set the groundwork as the technology is introduced, rather than retroactively look at it when problems occur in the future," says Joseph Mendelson, legal director at the Center for Food Safety in Washington.

Cloned Foods Pass Scientific Scrutiny

Scientific studies in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have also declared cloned foods safe. However, none of their governments have approved cloned food yet. Given that all three mandate labeling of genetically modified food, the expectation is that any approval of clones would come with a similar labeling requirement.

But food advocacy groups and some politicians say labeling is essential so that consumers can avoid products they believe are unsafe or unethical. A nationwide poll conducted in 2007 by the Consumers Union found that 89% of Americans want cloned foods to be labeled and that 69% have concerns about food derived from clones and their offspring.