If FDA gets its way, cloned animals will be approved for American dinner tables, and under this scheme, it would not require labeling of any kind, making food from cloned animals completely unavoidable. The public comment period on food from clones and their offspring did not end on Monday, April 2nd as expected, but was extended by the FDA to May 3rd.

FDA officials said it decided to grant the extra month as a result of receiving a large number of requests for an extension to the comment period. This means that if you haven?t done so already, you can still let the FDA know how they feel about the introduction of milk and meat from clones into the food supply without labeling. And one way to do that is through the Center for Food Safety?s website at this link.

Background
In March, a number of food trade and consumer groups sent a letter to the FDA calling for the extension, which stated it is “in the public interest of the agency to take the time needed to ‘get it right?.

Well, the groups that signed the letter included the American Bakers Association, the American Frozen Food Institute, the Food Marketing Institute, GMA/FPA, the International Dairy Foods Association, the National Milk Producers Federation, the National Restaurant Association, the Snack Food Association, and the Center for Food Safety.

Another excerpt from the letter states:

“As FDA is not facing any statutory requirement to proceed within a specific timetable, we respectfully request that FDA extend the comment period - commensurate with the scope and complexity of the documents being commented on and the time it took FDA to prepare them - to allow adequate time to analyze the information necessary to prepare a thorough response to the request for comments and to participate fully in the rulemaking process.?

You can view an executive summary of the Center for Food Safety?s report (pdf) on the FDA?s risk assessment at this link. To see the full report (pdf) visit this website.

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