Fourteen-week feeding test of meat and milk derived from cloned cattle in the rat

Agricultural application of cloned livestock produced by nuclear transfer requires public and governmental understanding of food-safety issues. To determine whether physiological effects occurred in animals fed products derived from cloned cattle, we conducted long-term (14 week) trials feeding Crj:CD(SD)IGS rats meat and milk from cloned cattle. Diets containing meat and milk were equal in nutritional value to the basal diet (AIN93G). Urinalysis was performed at Weeks 4, 8 and 12; at the end of the feeding period, blood sampling and autopsies were conducted. During the feeding periods, there were no significant differences in general condition, death loss, growth, battery of functional observational tests and estrous cycles among groups given diets containing meat and milk powder from non-clone, embryonic clone and somatic clone cattle. Furthermore, no significant changes attributed to consumption of clone meat or milk were detected in urinalysis, hematological and blood chemical, gross pathological or histological examinations. Therefore, we concluded that the physiologic conditions of the rats were not affected by consumption of meat and milk from bovine clones.