The U.S. Department of Agriculture has asked U.S. farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market, even though the FDA has announced that food from cloned livestock is safe to eat.
Bruce Knight, the USDA undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, asked a "voluntary moratorium" on cloned food to buy time for "an acceptance process" among consumers.
However, Americans and others are probably already eating meat from the offspring of clones. Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies admitted that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply, even though a years-old request by the FDA asked them to keep cloned animals and their offspring off the market pending completion of the agency's safety report. At least one cattle producer has openly sold semen from clones to many U.S. meat producers in the past few years, and that he is certain he is not alone.