Federal food officials expect cloned farm animals to reach U. S. markets in just two to four years, making some Canadians--and possibly foreign countries--question the safety of our own meat.

"Cloning technology is now becoming commercially viable and accessible to the industry," an internal federal summary of the cloning issue says.

Canadian law doesn't allow sales of cloned products unless they pass a safety test. But the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the safety of meat and milk from cloned animals, with no special safety tests or labelling required.

And those cloned animals could enter Canada, either as breeding stock or as meat.

Now the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and other departments are studying a possible future "when cloned product may make up a significant part of the market."

And as different countries may adopt different rules, "market and trade challenges are thus a possibility in the near to long term," it says in a summary of the issue.

Last fall, CFIA estimated there were already 600 cloned cattle, pigs and goats in the U. S.

The documents were obtained through an Access to Information Act request by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin.

The main cloning method is the same one that created Dolly the sheep. It is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and involved transplanting the DNA from an adult animal into an egg cell, which then becomes a fetus with the same set of genes as the adult animal.

The big problem, the federal documents warn, is that food and breeding stock are widely bought and sold across the Canada-U. S. border.

If the Americans start selling unlabelled meat or milk from cloned animals, these are expected to get into Canada. And this could cause European countries to ban American meat--and ours along with it, to be on the safe side.

European Union officials declared last year that meat from cloned animals is safe, but raised objections to cloning on the grounds of animal welfare.

Consumers won't likely get cloned meat directly. Cloning is far too expensive to waste on hamburgers.

"Due to their current cost, cloned animals are expected to be used as elite breeding animals. Meat and milk from the progeny of cloned animals will be the first to enter the marketplace."   

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