Despite FDA finding cloned animals safe, restaurants & grocery stores fight back.

According to an article in the LA Times, don't look for much food from cloned animals or their offspring at your neighborhood supermarket or restaurant any time soon.

Despite the Food and Drug Administration's declaration that such meat and milk are safe to eat, it is going to take years for ranchers to produce and raise the animals.

Even then, many of the nation's biggest grocers say they are dead set against selling it.

"Our intention is not to accept cloned products from our suppliers," said Meghan Glynn, a spokeswoman for Kroger Co., the Cincinnati-based owner of Ralphs, Food4Less and several other chains.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway Inc., the owner of Safeway and Vons, said it favored continuing a voluntary ban on the use of cloned animals for food.

And California Pizza Kitchen, the 229-restaurant chain based in Los Angeles, said it had "no plans to provide our guests with cloned products."

Add Dean Foods, the largest retailer of milk products, to the list of detractors.

The only problem is that they as well as the public probably won't know if they've received such products. In its decision, the FDA did not require products derived from clones to be labeled because agency scientists found no difference between them and meat and milk produced the conventional way.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday asked U.S. farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market indefinitely even as Food and Drug Administration officials announced that food from cloned livestock is safe to eat. Bruce I. Knight, the USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, requested an ongoing "voluntary moratorium" to buy time for "an acceptance process" that Knight said consumers in the United States and abroad will need, "given the emotional nature of this issue."

Bonnie - while the voluntary bans are nice, they won't last. Especially if the products do not need to be labeled. We have not heard the last of this issue. I know that I personally would like to know if my food came from a cloned animal. However, there are indications from ranchers that cloned animal products have already entered the marketplace and are impossible to track. Lovely! Once again, this is just another reason to eat certified organic.