CGS-authored

Clone a cat, go to jail -- or at least pay a fine.

That is the goal of animal welfare activists who announced yesterday that they are seeking state and federal restrictions on the small but growing pet-cloning industry.

Spearheaded by the American Anti-Vivisection Society in suburban Philadelphia, the effort takes aim at companies such as Genetic Savings and Clone Inc., the California enterprise that last year began to fill orders for cloned cats. The clones -- which have sold for $50,000 each -- are genetic duplicates of customers' deceased pets and represent the leading edge of an emerging commercial sector that advocates predict could eventually reap billions of dollars for corporate cloners.

Several companies are racing to compete with Genetic Savings and Clone, the industry leader, which has produced about a half-dozen cloned cats and aims to achieve the more difficult goal of cloning a dog this year. Some companies are already selling fish genetically engineered to glow in the dark, while one has said it will soon produce cats engineered to not cause reactions in people allergic to...