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: https://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.