When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chose the week between Christmas and New Year’s to tell the public that meat and milk from cloned animals was safe, one of the least surprised citizens was Carol Tucker Foreman. The founder and distinguished fellow of the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute and assistant secretary of agriculture from 1977 to 1981 reacted with characteristic directness. She released a statement accusing the FDA of trying "to force meat and milk from cloned animals down the throats of unwilling American consumers ... the FDA has gone astray, insisting that any time they say a food is safe, consumers are obligated to eat it … the FDA intends to allow the cloning industry to foist these foods on the public through stealth and secrecy."

In 2001, five years after the "birth" of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, the U.S. government called for a voluntary moratorium on the sale of meat and milk from cloned animals, citing "unknown health risks associated with cloning." But in December 2006, the FDA announced it found cloned livestock to be "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, announced, "Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day." A three-month period for public comment has been extended, after which the FDA will announce if and when it is lifting the moratorium.

Tucker Foreman says she was not surprised by the government's timing. "When regulatory agencies expect the public to react negatively to a policy decision, they often try to limit that reaction by making the announcement at a time they think everyone will be otherwise occupied. It's like whispering the announcement in the dead of the night, hoping opponents will be asleep. They'll make a controversial announcement just before the 4th of July, or the Friday after Thanksgiving, or the week between Christmas and New Year's, when they know that journalists are on vacation and the public isn't reading the newspaper or watching TV. In this case the news began to ooze out on the 22nd of December, but the actual announcement was on the 27th."

It didn't take long for the public to react. In a message posted on the FDA's Web site, a commenter identifying herself as Ms. Fern Robinson wrote: "Please do not allow cloned products into the market. Genetically altered food in our supply is bad enough, but you want to go the next step and introduce cloned food ... What will it take for you to see the error of your ways—three-headed grandchildren?"

Another Web user, Kyle DeAngelo from Baltimore, Md., wrote, "You are here to protect the public, NOT the special interest groups ... It also seems clear that you will not require any labeling on products or menus at restaurants that will clearly indicate item(s) as 'cloned food.' ... What happened the last time you let something go into the public sector that was considered 'safe' even though it doesn't occur in nature? Animal feed = Mad Cow Disease ..."

Sundlof responded in a recent press release: "Cloning poses no unique risks to animal health when compared to other assisted reproductive technologies currently in use in U.S. agriculture."

Still, some companies are listening to consumer fears. In late February—following the lead of progressive organizations such as Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream—Dean Foods, the nation's largest milk company, announced it will refuse milk from cloned cows.

Tucker Foreman was not the only professional food safety advocate to criticize the FDA. On December 28, Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, who believes many clones have deformities, told CBS News, "The vast majority of Americans do not want to consume meat or dairy products from cloned animals … This administration has not been paying attention to food safety. This is like a Katrina on your plate."

Kimbrell's opinion was underscored by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology survey, which found 64 percent of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning and about 43 percent thought food from clones was unsafe.

Tucker Foreman is also disturbed that the government is not calling for labels to identify food as coming from cloned animals. "No one should be forced to purchase and eat a product they don't want and support a technology they find offensive," she says. "Some people won't drink anything but fair-trade coffee, or eat only organic or kosher food. They're able to make these decisions because the foods are labeled. FDA intends to allow meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring to be sold without identifying labels, depriving consumers of the information they need to make an informed decision and robbing consumers of the ability to vote with their dollars."

Tucker Foreman says that when Gallup pollsters asked people to list practices they felt were "immoral" (putting aside the question of whether they were legal), 60 to 65 percent over a five-year period responded that they considered animal cloning immoral, a much higher percentage than abortion and capital punishment, and second only to human cloning.

In October, in her first statement on the impending release of the FDA study, Tucker Foreman wrote, "There is no public value from a technology that raises serious concerns regarding cruelty to animals and the nasty underlying threat that this is the first step down the slippery slope to human cloning ... and I don't think [these concerns] will ever go away."

She says now, "Our food choices are driven by culture and tradition and taste and religious scruples. No one at my house eats brains or tripe. And it has nothing to do with safety."

Tucker Foreman believes there are two problems with the government's case for cloning. One has to do with how the FDA defines "safe," and the other is the assumption that there is a public benefit to cloning.

With regard to the first, she says, "The FDA makes its decisions based on chemical composition, nutritional composition, toxicology and microbiology. Unless you can show a reason to presume a danger in one of those areas, it assumes that it's safe. But the fact is, we don't know all the ramifications of cloning. While I don't think we should say that we're never going to go forward because there might be a horrible event in the future, the scientists and government regulators might be a little more modest about what we do know or don't know. The hubris of the people pushing cloning technology is overwhelming."

As for public benefit, she flatly disagrees with biotech scientists and other commentators who say there is one, and refers them to the National Academy of Scientists' 2002 warning that more data was needed, which, she says, the FDA ignored.

Tucker Foreman says the problem with FDA regulation of food is that Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach's expertise is in medicine. "He's a brilliant cancer doctor. He knows about drugs. He doesn't know about—and isn't interested in learning about—the other half of his job, food safety … Food is FDA's pitiable stepchild."

Now that these opening salvos have been fired and the three-month period for public comment extended, all sides await the FDA's decision (still pending at press time) as to whether and when unlabeled meat and milk will appear in stores and restaurants. Perhaps the aforementioned Ms. Robinson was right when she warned the FDA, "There is no way to know if these foods are safe. I think what you will do, in the long run, [is] create even more vegetarians." We wonder, given the current food climate, if Tucker Foreman thinks this might be a good idea.