Consumers may not be able to avoid cloned food

Less than a dozen years after Dolly the sheep became the world's first cloned mammal, grocers and restaurateurs are digesting the fact that milk and meat from cloned animals could soon filter into their supply chains.

The government took major steps toward easing cloned livestock and their offspring into the food supply in mid-January, when the Food and Drug Administration concluded they're safe to eat.

The question is, will consumers swallow the new technology? And how will food businesses cope if their customers balk?

Many food merchants are still framing their policies while they warily monitor public opinion. The historic commercial debut of cloning comes in an era when a significant segment of consumers have rejected other foods the FDA deemed safe, such as milk from hormone-treated cows and genetically modified corn.

Cloning is an attempt to create a new animal using the DNA from an existing adult animal. The FDA, while noting that livestock cloning produces many malformed or ill newborn animals, said cloned animals that survive for several months after birth can be healthy. They can reproduce normally and produce healthy young, the FDA said. The agency said it found no signs that food from healthy clones is harmful to humans, and predicted that sickly clones would be excluded from the food supply.

Consumer groups, however, have called FDA's positive safety assessment hasty and ill-founded. The Center for Food Safety said the FDA based many conclusions on small or limited studies, many of them financed by cloning companies. Clones that appear healthy can have infections, or abnormalities that could affect food quality such as unusual proteins or imbalances between protein and fats, the group said. Further studies should be done to evaluate clones and their offspring, the organization said.

Such groups are urging consumers to press their supermarkets and restaurants to refuse food from clones. And those businesses are being peppered with inquiries like "Will my hamburger meat come from a cloned cow?" and "Are clones kosher?"

But food merchants, from small shop owners to national supermarket chains, could face formidable challenges if they want to guarantee customers the option of avoiding all products linked to cloning.

No public system is in place to alert food sellers when products from animal lines that include clones could reach their shelves -- whether in the form of a rib-eye steak, a quart of low-fat milk, a can of beef minestrone or a wedge of sharp cheddar.

Consumer groups such as the Center for Food Safety and Consumers Union support mandatory labeling of all products linked to cloning, from raw meat to meatball sandwiches. They're backing bills proposed in Congress and by a few state legislators.

Without labeling, they argue, any food safety problems that did arise from cloning would never be linked to the technology.

Some retailers, after hearing from customers, are also calling for some form of government action. Two supermarket chains, Safeway and Whole Foods Market, say the government should oversee a system to track clones through the food supply. It should also consider other means, such as food labeling, to ensure that consumers can make informed choices about products of cloning, the companies said.

"The lack of effective governmental oversight and tracking could mean consumers will lose the ability to choose clone-free products," Whole Foods spokeswoman Margaret Wittenberg said.

The FDA maintains that no labeling or disclosure requirements are necessary to protect public health. The agency, after years of study, issued a lengthy report Jan. 15 concluding that milk and meat from cloned cattle, pigs and goats are safe for consumption. The FDA said it had too little information to assess cloned sheep, but it found no food safety problems connected with the progeny of clones.

The offspring of all cloned livestock were immediately cleared as food sources by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, based on the FDA's findings. Clones themselves -- cattle, pigs and goats -- will also enter the food supply. But when, and under what regulatory scheme, if any, has not yet been decided.

The USDA is inviting industry input as it develops a plan to usher cloned animals into the market. In the meantime, the agency is asking companies that have created or purchased clones to honor a voluntary ban on selling their meat or milk for food.

Even before the FDA's favorable report, a few clone owners admitted in various news reports that they had already sold milk or meat from the animals as food.

As the rules stand now, livestock breeders and milk or meat suppliers have no legal obligation to disclose to either food manufacturers or consumers that a product came from a cloned animal line. Some vendors plan to keep their products clear of cloned lineages, but the FDA may not permit packages to bear a voluntary label such as "clone free."

Safeway Inc. of Pleasanton, one of the nation's largest food retailers, said its customers are demanding more information. The company acknowledged that the government conducted important studies on food from clones. But to help shoppers make informed choices about products tied to cloning, Safeway supports additional studies "that would help ensure changes to federal policy are done in a manner that maintains consumer confidence and informed decision making."

Bruce Knight, USDA undersecretary for marketing, said the agency is willing to help industry members create a tracking and certification program if they request it. The USDA already administers standards and certification of organic products. Knight said the USDA would work with companies that want to set up voluntary labeling of food from clones.

(E-mail Bernadette Tansey at btansey(at)sfchronicle.com)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)