You know until there is more definitive information on cloning, especially concerning health issues, I think the registries should refrain from allowing cloned horses to be registered. There hasn't even been one generation of cloned horses to live from foal to old age to see if the cloned horse is just the same as a non cloned horse.
There are so many unknowns when it comes to cloning and genetically engineered foods. The science is just too new to make absolute claims like a cloned horse is the same as an uncloned horse. It seems to me until a few generations of "cloned" horses prove themselves it would be in the best interest of the registries (and horse breeding) to stay closed for the time being.
Based on what argument? They are still horses. They are the exact genetic material that is registerable in the original. They are not the same animal - genetic _expression_ is affected by fetal development.
Regular horses differ in environment and training. This is not a valid argument not to accept clones for the same reason. You said that cloned animal have serious health flaws. So do regular animals. We alleviate that by having lots of horses to experiment with and breed out or manage things like CID or HYPP. They only way to achieve that in cloned horses is too make the cost of creating them cheap enough to have lots of them to work out the problems.
Let there be light. The more knowledge we have, the more opportunity we have. Every breed organization and equine sport should embrace cloning. Not doing so appears to me to be sticking one's head in the sand.
