USDA: No Quick End for Cloning Product Moratorium

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Monday it will not lift a voluntary moratorium on selling meat and milk from cloned animals to consumers any time soon.

In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled that products from cloned cattle, swine and goats and their offspring were as safe as milk and meat from traditional animals.

Before then, farmers and ranchers had followed a voluntary ban on the sale of cloned products.

After the FDA's ruling, USDA asked the cloning industry to prolong the ban for a transitional period expected to last several months.

"We have asked those companies to continue with that voluntary moratorium," Bruce Knight, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, said at the National Association of Agriculture Journalists conference. "I do not have an end date on that."

Knight added the marketplace so far has "been very accepting, very understanding" of the moratorium.

USDA is now responding to questions and concerns in the sector and working with other countries reviewing cloned products.

Even after the ban is lifted, it could take three to five years before consumers are able to buy clone-derived food as animals need to be cloned, and then mature and give birth.

Read the full Reuters story here.