Tired of having the same old thing for dinner every night? The FDA may soon take that cliché to a whole new level.

Act now if you don't want to be eating cloned meat or consuming dairy products from cloned animals by the end of this year. The FDA has a public comment period open only until April 2, so don't delay. Spread the word. On December 28, 2006 the FDA announced its tentative approval to allow meat and dairy from cloned animals based on their draft assessment of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications. Also read the FDA's risk management plan. Pending actual approval, the products could be on our grocery store shelves by the end of this year.

There are a number of concerns involved with cloned meat.

Considering the high rate of birth abnormalities in clones including intestinal blockages, squashed faces, weak immune systems, high rates of late-term spontaneous abortion, extremely oversized babies and more, cloning animals commercially is nothing short of animal cruelty (I'm not even touching all the issues involved with mass-produced meat in general).

The mother's are given huge amounts of hormones to make the pregnancy possible, and, due to the birth defects already mentioned, calves are given huge amounts of antibiotics, further increasing their levels in our food supply.

There is also the fear of narrowing the gene pool. Variety is a part of the natural world; it is how things survive. Rowan Wolf explains:

Despite the fact that the meat and milk from these animals has been scientifically proven to have the same constitution as non-cloned animal meat and milk, I fear that we do not know how our bodies will treat this "food". What would eating the same protein over and over again do to our bodies? We need variety. As I said earlier, life can not survive without variety.

We, the public, are being asked to participate in a massive experiment on our bodies, which we can not avoid taking part in if these products are not labeled. We have the right to know what we are consuming. As of now, we will be able to choose to buy organic products in order to avoid this, but biotech industry did try to attempt to allow clones to be defined as organic. On February 8, legislation was introduced to prevent this from happening, thankfully. But why should we not be allowed to know whether or not ALL food on our shelves is cloned? It seems like this knowledge about a basic need (food) should be considered a very basic freedom.

Write to the FDA right now. Talk about this issue with your friends and family and encourage them to write. Let me know what you think, too.

