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(Ivanhoe Newswire)  Now that the FDA has declared meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat, a number of companies are producing cloned animals for the livestock industry.  Some are already marketing semen from clones.

A poll done by Consumers Union found that 89 percent of consumers want their food labeled to indicate whether it’s from cloned animals.   But should access to DNA from every unique clone be made public?  Patrick Cunningham of Dublin’s Trinity College and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government of Ireland thinks so. 

Cunningham, also Co-founder and Chairman of IdentiGEN Ltd. which was founded by a group of geneticists from Ireland’s Trinity College.  They are the developers of DNA TraceBack, the worlds’ first DNA-based meat traceability system.  DNA TraceBack is used to track the identify of meat back to it’s source.

Currently, data concerning the DNA of cloned animals is propriety.  Producers do not make it public although cloned animals do wear ear tags.  But, Cunningham states that in order for producers and retailers to be able to back up their claims of ‘clone free’ products, they will evidence like DNA traceability, which can be provided by the kind of database TraceBack provides.

TraceBack is being used by major grocery retailers and meat producers in Ireland and the United Kingdom to support marketing of branded meat, verify country of origin and validate product attributes.  It’s also used to support traceability of fresh meat in the event of a product recall.

IdentiGEN has North American headquarters in Lawrence, Kansas. In October 2007, it received USDA Process Verified Program approval for its DNA TraceBack system.  

SOURCE: American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, February 15, 2008

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