From what you said I actually think that the government is taking an appropriate stance regarding cloned animals. While most consumers might have a gut reaction making them worried about health risks from eating a cloned animal, the real danger is to our overall food supply chain.

Eating a cloned animal should theoretically pose no greater risk than eating the original animal, so I think the FDA is appropriate to say there is no direct health risk.

However cloning animals takes our monoculture food production system to an even larger degree of dangerous uniformity. The less diverse the population of animals, the greater the risk that a disease could rip through the entire population. This is obviously bad for the animals, but is also bad for the people eating the animals (think Mad Cow), and could even make better breeding grounds for things like the Bird Flu to make the jump to human populations.

Since the mission of the USDA includes the protection and safetly of our nations food supply (stratigic goal #4), it is fantastic that they are stepping in and doing their job to help prevent the large scale risks caused by cloned animals, rather than going along with industry groups that want to make a buck selling identical animals.

Everyone should probably contact the USDA and tell them that they are doing a heck of a job. However, it should also probably be mentioned to them though that food safetly should be Strategic Goal #1, and not fourth on the list.