The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally endorsed the meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats as safe, but the agency’s 678-page report failed to satisfy critics who cite concerns rooted in ethics, not science. ‘Neither the agency nor animal scientists are qualified to tell us whether and when it is ethically acceptable for humans to alter the essential nature of animals,’ said Carol Tucker Foreman of Washington-based Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute. She and others said it was time for a national discussion on whether tailor-making animals in laboratories was wise. ‘Congressional hearings might start a robust societal dialogue on those issues,’ said Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Polls show Americans are hardly clamoring for bacon cheeseburgers made from cloned animals or their offspring. In a survey released this month by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, 64% of respondents were at least somewhat ‘uncomfortable with animal cloning.’ Such sentiments were outside the scope of the FDA’s scientific review. The agency’s Center for Veterinary Medicine focused on the health of cloned animals and their progeny, tracking them with physical examinations […]