SCI/TECH: American Government Expected To Allow The Sale Of Meat From Cloned Cows

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve the sale of meat and milk from cloned cows.
By cloning the best cows the industry expects to have a better product. However industry and consumer groups are concerned that a public backlash will follow, surveys indicate many Americans remain jittery or harbor ethical concerns.
Some consumer advocates have urged regulators to delay a decision until those fears can be calmed.



This will be suicide for the beef industry.
Animals need genes from a mother and a father to progress. Cloned animals will be faced with immunity problems that can be devastating if many farmers pick up cloning.
Scientists have found that cloning of animals sometimes cause fetal overgrowth, the fetus grows unusually large and generally dies just before or after birth. Cloned animals have also been found to sometimes have under-developed lungs and reduced immunity to infection.

I would expect groups like PETA to protest hard against this.
Personally this turns me off of meat more than BSE does.

Related News Links:
www.boston.com

I would expect groups like PETA to protest hard against this.

I do too. But the difference is that I think they're nuts.

Cloned animals mean we can better monitor what we're eating. Less healthy? NO. Worst case scenario we get the same product. Best case scenario we can chose what's in our food and what isn't.

Yeah, PETA is pretty nuts.

Personally I think more research is needed in cloning before we start changing the farming industry. Cloning on a mass scale goes against advancement in a species. I really feel like this is going to back fire on the beef industry.

PETA= People Eating Tasty Animals.. That aside I'm not sure what to think on this. Even if you clone a healthy animal dont any genetic problems the host animal have pass on to the clone?

The article states that the meat and milk products will come from the offspring of cloned cattle. The clones themselves are too expensive to be used for anything except as breeding stock.

This reminds me a great deal of Nazis. The Nazis wished to create a super race, the most pure race of humans in their own eyes. How? By, through means you're already familiar with, causing white humans with blonde hair and blue eyes to be the only human "sub-race" to roam this planet. That was terrible when it was being done to people, it shouldn't be taken very lightly when being done to another living species, the cow community.

While I recognize cows are not people, I also recognize this as crossing the line, or getting pretty close to that line. Humanity wishes to clone and breed "the best" cows which as a result, could end up with few or no undesirables. If the average cow becomes that which we are envisioning at this moment, through cloning, will have achieved the cow-version of the Aryan race.

Just my view, which is unsupportive of selective cloning, unsure of cloning in general.

Sieg Heil?

Eating the offspring of clones really does seem one step closer to the Brave New World. Bring on the Soylent Green. Cloned beef pushes me one step closer to "no red meat."

Given the high cost of cloning, industry officials and consumer advocates say it's more likely that consumers would be sold the meat -- if not the milk -- of offspring of cloned cattle

'More likely'
Not 'will be'.

The only thing holding farmers back from going clone all the way is the cost. American cattle farmers have been making a killing since the BSE scare happened and the border was closed.
What I'm trying to say is, once/if cloning becomes more affordable to farmers then that is what we are going to get.

Good old fashioned breeding will always be cheaper than cloning. Once they have animals with the desirable genome, nature can take its course.

[edit on 2005/10/2 by GradyPhilpott]

I guess I don't see an issue with animal cloning, or eating clones or their offspring. This isn't gene splicing, it's merely a different reproductive mechanism. Genetic diversity is important to maintaining a usable food supply, so we probably shouldn't clone a single animal so much that the gene pool dries up.

Domestic cattle have already been genetically engineered through selective breeding. They are not representative of wild cattle (if there is such a thing anymore) from a gene pool perspective.

there has been eugenics in breeding cows since forever.

every farmer trys to get the best bulls for their cows, and AI is already used every where, its the same thing almost, using the sperm from one good bull and selling it to every one.

offspring that isnt worthy of breeding is eaten.

its the same for every farmed animals.

my self i really dont care wat kind of cow my meat comes from, so long as it dont kill me,

Yea I dont really see a problem with eating cloned meat. # they could just grow the meat parts for all I care. Just make sure I get my meat and im good. I also have no problem with eating genetically engineered crops. Food is food and cloned and engineered food can make it plentiful for the world.

Why even do this? We are close to manufacturing meat without the need for slaughterhouses. Seems like there is just no point in this in my mind.

Originally posted by DYepes
Yea I dont really see a problem with eating cloned meat. # they could just grow the meat parts for all I care. Just make sure I get my meat and im good. I also have no problem with eating genetically engineered crops. Food is food and cloned and engineered food can make it plentiful for the world.

Food is already plentiful we just need better ways at distributing that food, we throw allot of it away and even in some cases burn it right after harvest. Genetically modified foods could have major adverse reactions 10-20 years down the road. We just don't know so why commit our population to an unproven technology?

[edit on 3-10-2005 by sardion2000]

How the heck does cloning ethics come into play here? Theyre friggin' cows!

Mooooooooooooo.

For centuries now, evolution has played a menial role in the development of the almighty bovine.

We have controlled mating, natural selection, and survival of the fittest. The only thing evolution has done is generate mutations, giving us the gift of chocolate milk.

I'm no farmer, but I would hazard to say that the cow can't get much better for our needs than as it is right now. So what's the next step? Copy the good'uns.

I'm sure as long as nobody eats a copy of a copy of a copy, there will be no death at the dinner table.

I have no ethical qualms about cloning I just question the wisdom of cloning whole cows when we can build up burgers and steaks cell by cell in cultures? Yes that is a form of cloning but it's not the whole cow. It would be allot more efficient and you would have way more control over the contaiminents like rogue prions and the like. Plus how would you like Grade A beef each and every meal for cheap cheap cheap Of course the technology is a bit of a ways off, and it already has the PETA stamp of approval I believe(since there is no "sentient" animal involved or some such nonsense)

Why am I not surprised at the lack of concern give to this topic? We've been coddled by science for so long, they are a patient bunch , that we stop asking the right questions like "Not can we do something but should we do something"? The genetic splicing is going to come back and bite us on the rear, WHY WON'T THIS?

Originally posted by apc

We have controlled mating, natural selection, and survival of the fittest. The only thing evolution has done is generate mutations, giving us the gift of chocolate milk.

Could we get a clarification of this issue?

Cloning isn't going to do anything except select for desirable traits. Nature has been doing it forever. It's just a shortcut to what man has been doing for at least 10,000 years in terms of artificial selection.

I am only going to said this,

I am glad I no longer eat meat from cows. When the cloning include chicken, pork and fish.

I will become a vegetarian, when irrigated vegetables comeback to the market I will grow my own in my backyard.

I am somebody that grew up with everything homemade and grown including the meat from animals.

The taste consistancy and texture of the meats, vegetables and fruits is a lot different when it comes from home grown.

Originally posted by intrepid
Why am I not surprised at the lack of concern give to this topic? We've been coddled by science for so long, they are a patient bunch

, that we stop asking the right questions like "Not can we do something but should we do something"? The genetic splicing is going to come back and bite us on the rear, WHY WON'T THIS?

How will it? Gross negligence I can see happening but how is that any different from a regular farm?

Let me put it to you this way, partial cloning would remove billions of tons of solid waste and air pollution from the mix, add it in the same infrastructure as the Urban Organic Farms and we can have an etremely low-Pollution food infrastructure that is grown literally right down the road from you. Maybe we can even get it to be a Zero-Sum game when it comes to pollutants.

[edit on 3-10-2005 by sardion2000]

sardion2000: Apologies if it seemed my ethical prods were directed at you since your post preceeded mine. They were just at the previous comments about the ethics of cloning cows. Although, I wholeheartedly agree it would be much more efficient to simply grow a hunk of rump than clone a whole cow. However, I would be far more hesitant to injest such a creation. Cloning atleast works off a proven set of blueprints. I would be afraid of some chemist getting a protein wrong causing me to turn inside out or whatnot.

GradyPhilpott
Could we get a clarification of this issue?

What issue? Chocolate milk?



[edit on 3-10-2005 by apc]