The report was long (678 pages) but, in the end, the Food and Drug Administration's findings were easily summed up in a single sentence: Meat and milk from cloned animals is safe for human consumption.
The FDA's report doesn't yet approve the sale of food from cloned animals but is the first step towards what at this point seems a done deal. The government will take comments from the public until April 2 before rendering its final decision.
The analysis by the FDA is seen as a victory for biotechnology companies that argue breeders will now be able to keep herds made up only of the finest livestock.
Mark Walton, president of ViaGen, told The Washington Post, "The higher-end breeders are going to start signing up and taking advantage of this. They've been interested, but they've been skeptical that we'd ever get the regulatory process dealt with."
Others outside of biotechnology circles do not share Mr. Walton's enthusiasm. The Center for Food Safety has asked the FDA to take a more cautious approach to approving meat and milk from cloned animals to be used for feeding humans. The group argues the FDA should do rigorous testing and approve one species at a time, much in the manner it handles prescription medicines. As it stands now, all clones would get the thumbs up, assuming the decision isn't kyboshed during the public comment stage.
The agency is very comfortable with its approach on the matter.
"We have looked very, very closely," Stephen F. Sundlof, the FDA's chief of veterinary medicine, said in a telephone news conference. "There's just not anything there that is
conceivably hazardous to the public health."
Should the FDA give its approval, it will be quite a while before the meat or milk from cloned animals reaches the average American's home. Today, there are fewer than 1,000 clones living on farms in the U.S.
Another obstacle is the high price of clones. Some animals can cost up to $15,000, making them too valuable to send to the slaughterhouse.
"Everything is basically two to three years away, even if it all opens up tomorrow," said Steve Mower, director of marketing at Cyagra, a company in the cloning business.
There are some who question cloning on a purely economic basis.
Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America said U.S. farmers already produce more milk than Americans can drink and the government has spent billions since 1999 in buying up the surplus.
Discussion Question: Where do you see the cloned livestock issue going?