Meat and milk from cloned animals could be sold in US supermarkets by next year, it was reported today.
American farmers have already created scores of dairy cows which will produce milk by Spring 2003.
Cloned veal and pigs would be also be ready to be butchered for food by 2004, animal breeders said.
The farmers are now awaiting a report from the US Government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is reviewing whether clones, their by-products or their offspring should be allowed into the food supply.
If the FDA is unable to produce any compelling evidence of a problem, they will not have the legal power to keep produce from cloned animals being sold.
The National Academy of Sciences said in a recent report that copying adult animals without altering their genes was unlikely to affect safety.
"I think our message was fairly loud and clear," Mr Eric Hallerman, a biologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, told the Washington Post.
"The concern about food safety, we thought, was just way overblown." Farmer Greg Wiles, from Williamsport, Maryland, who has cloned Holstein dairy cows, said they were fantastic milk producers.
"There was a lot of newness when the clones were born, but they've really become just like any other cow on the farm," he told the newspaper.
There are currently fewer than 100 cloned animals on US farms. If the price of cloning falls and the government allows its produce to be sold, farmers believe entire dairy herds may one day be stocked with clones of the most prolific cows.
But animal rights groups said there were concerns about the welfare of clones. A higher proportion of cloned animals die in the womb or just after birth, and the pregnancies are more stressful for the surrogate mothers.