Deadline Monday 2 April: "No" to Bush Administration's Cloned Milk and Meat
For Immediate Release
Contact: Lee Hall, Legal Director
Friends of Animals
leehall@friendsofanimals.org
The Bush Administration recently pronounced products from animal-cloning experiments safe for the retail market.
“This should be ringing alarm bells throughout the animal-advocacy field,” said Lee Hall, legal director of Friends of Animals.
If the agency’s report is adopted, the United States will be the first country to approve animal cloning in food production, and cloned flesh and dairy products could soon be in grocers’ aisles.
Scientists will thereafter attempt to work out the kinks in their sheep and chicken cloning projects, and introduce genetically modified fish into the stream of commerce.
A voluntary moratorium on the sale of the milk and flesh of clones and their offspring has applied since 2001. The Food and Drug Administration tentatively approved the products in 2003, but retreated after its own advisory panel found insufficient scientific agreement. Now the FDA’s ready to go again.
“Implicated in this promotion are multiple questions whose answers can only be found at a deeper level than a regulatory body can reach,” said Lee Hall.
“The most fundamental question is: Why clone at all?”
The FDA seeks comments from the public until 2 April 2007. For information, see http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01541.html
and scroll for the link to submit your electronic comments.
Note carefully:
The question you must answer is whether you oppose approving products from any cloned animals and their offspring for the retail market.
Please be clear in your comments that the animal-advocacy community will not be placated by labels or husbandry regulations. Regulating the relevant procedures does not mitigate the harm that cloning imposes.
To see submitted comments from which you may select points and phrase as you see fit, visit Friends of Animals’ comments: http://www.friendsofanimals.org/programs/animal-rights/Safety_of_Animal_Clones.php. Feel free to quote and support Friends of Animals’ comments.
For a background article, see “Mad Science: Cloned Milk and Meat on the Fast Track [http://tinyurl.com/3ar73m], presented in Satya magazine, a monthly publication focusing on vegetarianism, environmentalism, animal advocacy, and social justice.
Friends of Animals, headquartered in Darien, Connecticut, is a global leader in animal rights advocacy, founded in 1957.
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4 Comments
On March 29, 2007, Tina Volpe wrote:
NO! To Cloned meat and milk…this is against God and nature. Our world is suffering enough at the hands of agribusinesses and the chemicals used to produce animals for meat. Spend the money cleaning up the mess from the factory farming lagoons causing our earth to warm… and change what these animals are going through every day of their lives. Do not do this, this is morally, ethically and spiritually WRONG.
On March 31, 2007, sophia rubinstein wrote:
the very idea of cloning animals is repugnant. I cannot possibly entertain the thought of usin gthem as food. Really!
On April 14, 2007, Maria Kinzer wrote:
I am against the idea of cloning animals for consumption and against hormone in my milk and meat. This must stop. It’s not acceptable.
On April 14, 2007, Maria Kinzer wrote:
I am against the idea of cloning animals for consumption and against hormone in milk and meat. This must stop. It’s unacceptable.