Coming soon: cloned beef?
This Wired article looks at the debate over cloning of food animals. Predictibly, consumers express reluctance to consider buying cloned meat, even though scientists are reasonably certain that it would be safe to eat.
Interestingly, this debate may well be moot: the economics of cloning cattle mean that we won't be eating Clone Steak any time soon. Cloning is not economically effective for raising cattle for slaughter ($72K a pop these days...), but it works when employed instead of breeding to perpetuate a particularly strong genetic line-- making ten copies of your best Hereford. Man! Stud fees galore!
--Editorial handwaving--
People flip out over genetically modified food way too much. Some advances, like the much-touted Vitamin-A enriched Golden Rice, are 100% double plus goods. Others are of more dubious good, like Monsanto seed that goes bad after a year. At this point, the general public is so paranoid about Frankenfood (and note the fear factor in that very slang) that a reasoned debate isn't even possible, even though plenty of food has already been tampered with at the genetic level by pointy-heads with clipboards. This paranoia is no way to feed the world.
On that note, the Wired article does note that the biggest concern of scientists working on cloning cattle is that a clone might escape and try to breed. Although it's hard to imagine a doomsday scenario arising from that event, if the scientists are worried, I'll let them find a solution.
Personally, I would LOVE the economics and technology of cloning to advance to the point that cheap beef could be vatgrown. That would be great! Cheesesteak without the cruelty! Seriously, one reason I don't eat a lot of meat is that I want to do my tiny, symbolic part to help humankind, and a cow takes up a lot of perfectly good grain that could otherwise feed people on the cheap. Vatgrown beef would mitigate this concern, and have the added benefit that a cow didn't have to die. Of course, the Black Angus top-line stuff could/should still be the real thang, but who the hell's going to notice the difference in cafeteria food?
I love the future!
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People certainly flip out
People certainly flip out over GM foods far too much. When you compare the basic crops and animals that we were using - say fifty years ago - to their original wild ancestors, the differences are staggering. Even without eevill genetic engineering, pre-scientific farmers and herders were able to bring about serious changes in living organisms, to increase their utility to man.
Genetic engineering allows us to do this more precisely, and with greater predictability.
That Hereford cow, if it is a clone, is by definition identical to the original cow. There could be no way that it is any more harmful to eat than the original. We are already face problems with narrowing gene lines in crops as well as animals, as more successful breeds edge out the competition. If a blight or plague were to hit the right combination, the results would be bad - with large percentages of that crop vulnerable due to the lack of genetic diversity.
But this is not the kind of problem that the opponents of GM foods focus on.
(And remember Johno, people are hungry for political reasons, not because you bought a steak at the Higgly-Piggly.)