Gov`t panel says products from cloned cows, pigs safe

TOKYO, Jan. 19 Kyodo -
Beef and pork products from somatic cell-cloned animals have a greater chance
of being put on the Japanese market after a government food safety panel
compiled a report Monday stating such products are safe.
A working group of the Cabinet Office's Food Safety Commission has reached the
conclusion that cows and pigs cloned from somatic cells are ''as safe as
conventionally bred cows and pigs'' from a food safety standpoint.
The commission will carry out an assessment of the panel report before making a
final decision and proposing it to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,
which has a final say on whether to allow products from cloned animals for
domestic human consumption.
It is possible that an intense debate will ensue as a large number of consumers
and experts appear disinclined to accept products from cloned livestock,
officials familiar with the matter said.
Questions have been raised about the safety of such products, partly due to the
tendency for a number of cows and pigs cloned from somatic cells to die at
birth or shortly afterward.
However, the working group brushed aside such concern after looking into more
than 200 study reports and written materials issued in Japan and abroad,
maintaining that cloned cows ''grow as healthily as conventionally bred cows
around six months after birth if they reach that point.''
The group's report also rules out any problems regarding the safety of products
from cloned pigs and the naturally bred offspring of cloned cows and pigs.
The nutritional value of meat and milk from cloned cows and pigs as well as
their progenies is of the same quality as that from non-cloned animals, added
the group, chaired by Takao Hayakawa, head of a Kinki University laboratory.
The report also referred to the need for continued information-gathering
efforts to keep up with the developments of food safety studies linked to
cloning technology, noting that this field of biological sciences is still new.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in January last year that meat
and milk from cloned animals are as safe for human consumption as products from
conventionally bred animals.
The move raised the possibility that such products could be imported to Japan
in the future, prompting the health ministry last April to begin assessing the
safety of cloned products.
==Kyodo