Can someone please verify this? I just received an email from Friends of the Earth alerting me to the fact that the FDA, buckling under pressure from big biotech and the agro-business lobby, has cleared the way for the sale of cloned meat. What’s more, they claim that, according to language in the new Farm Bill, it can be sold without labels identifying it as such. Clearly at this point they’re talking about cloning and growing identical cows, so there’s really no savings in terms of cow lives expended, but I suspect that one day we’ll have the technology to clone not just the cows, but the meat itself. I predict we’ll all have big, flesh-extruding tubes in our homes. At that point, I might be down for it, as it would mean that no actual cows were going to slaughter, but now it just seems creepy. As bad as it is to kill millions of cows a year in order to keep people supplied with beef, I think it’s somehow worse to just keep killing the same cow over and over again millions of times.
Connect
21 Comments
couldn’t agree more.
i mean, why are we striving to ‘create’ more meat in the first place? i never heard we had a beef deficit issue…
I don’t know what the FDA is saying about it. Sorry, Mark, I can’t verify it for you.
Let me say this about it though: A cloned cow is simply a cow with the same genetic information as the cow from which it was cloned. That is to say, there is nothing special about the meat itself, except that it must have been determined that the donor cow had superior meat. That said there is no argument I can think of for needing special FDA regulation of such.
It’s unfortunately true:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080115/ap_on_he_me/cloned_meat
We can now get cloned meat and milk. I wonder if they’ll irradiate it while they’re at it too?
Anyone read “Feed”, the young adult novel by M.T. Anderson? There’s a beef farm in it that’s just a complex web of artificial blood vessels and meat – no need for even cloned cows.
And the internet’s in your head. And suburbs are on top of each other. And you can turn off the “sun” with a switch. And there are anti-gravity clubs on the moon. And lesions (related to your feed) are fashion accessories. And the level of teen discourse has plummeted alarmingly. And stuff.
Dude – that’s how Jesus fed fish to all those people. He cloned the fish, quickly apparently.
Cloning is very expensive and the cloned embryo still needs to carried to term by a mother animal, so it doesn’t make sense for producing regular old animals for slaughter. Of couse, if you genetically engineered a special cow that produced extra omega-3 fatty acids, or its own antibiotics so it could be fed corn and not get sick – well, that would be another matter. A super cow like that would be patentable (just like genetically engineered seed) and the idea of cloning starts to make more sen$e. You could sell frozen cloned embryos to a rancher who would just have to implant them into the “mother”. I’m sure Monsanto is working on the idea this very minute.
Going vegan is sounding better and better.
I can’t wait to try human meat grown in a tub. That’s what I’m waiting for.
Some think we’re already consuming the milk and meat of clones. This is a note from Ben Kroetz at True Majority. Maybe this decision to accept it was necessary because they knew it couldn’t be stopped.
I love blind ignorance. I just wish I could find a few ignorant people to blindly do what I bid them to do.
Cloned animal meat can’t be good for us. Don’t trust the logic of science. The scientists don’t know anything.
God created cows and sent them forth to procreate. And he did NOT make gay cows.
I thought the subject of this post was “Clown Meat.” I was super-excited.
Perhaps we’re functionally already there, or close to it, but the thing that concerns me about cloning foodstuffs is the problems with monocultures. If we get to the point where there are really only 20 cows (or 20 apples, or 20 goats or whatever) what happens when a disease exploits a weakness in all of them?
I don’t know enough about the issue to know how plausible it is, but it is worrying.
Great point, Thomas. Thanks.
I always thought in the future food would be a utility like gas, water, electric. One would have a “Food” pipeline attached to their house. Turn on a valve and nutritious goo would come out. Perhaps we would also have connections on our body to hook it up. No wasting time eating. Hook it up while sleeping or watching TV. All foodstuffs would be combined in a central plant and pumped to everyone.
cloned meat isn’t going to hurt anybody that’s eating it (as john on forest has mentioned), but it will hurt rural economies, and that’s the problem. it’s expensive, and if for some reason cows started to be cloned as a primary means of reproduction, only the giant factory farms are going to do it. and the ones that are cloned will be the ones that produce good meat without needing as many hormones and antibiotics while not getting much exercise, which is how factory farms raise their animals.
it will remain cheaper and will always give better-tasting meat to raise cows on grass and let them roam around, but the factory farms won’t do that, and the fda is beholden to them, so this is what we get.
meredith
I were a confined cow on factory farm, I would welcome death. Whereas, if I was a free-range cow, eating natural grasses in the sunny meadow, I would want to live forever.
Isn’t it kinder to put those factory creatures out of their misery than to snatch life away from a contented beast?
And, with cloning, we’ll have cows free from the lingering souls of our ancestors which means a large part of the world will be finally be free to enjoy prime rib. Hindu kosher.
I like the idea of the whole world working together to develop one really, really super-giant cow, which all of us can eat. We’d grow one a year, in Nebraska or something. And we’d be full as mother fuckers all year long.
And I bet these are delicious!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=508887&in_page_id=1965
There hasn’t been enough studies on clon meat I think! The FDA is saying that it is ok now but what will they say in 15 or 20 years when you have a 2nd head growing out of your neck because they didn’t do enough research?
Dear Sir or Madam,
We are Vietdelta Industrial Corp., which deals in exporting a wide variety of VietNam Seaweed. Our products are high quality with competitive price and suitable to difference markets.
Our products:
Kappaphycus Alvarezii
Gracilaria Verrucosa
Sargassum
White Kappaphycus Alvarezii
Sargassum spp
If you have interest in our products, do not hesitate to contact us for more information. We hope that we can cooperate together and keep our long relationship.
We look forward to hearing from your reply soon.
Thanks and best regards.
Mss Thanh
Sale Department
Viet Delta Industrial Co.Ltd
20/5Dinh Bo Linh Str , Ward 24
Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City
Viet Nam
Tel : +84.8.5115601/03
Fax:+84.8.5114834
skype: marianguyen83
email:thanh@vdelta.com.vn
or maria@vdelta.com.vn
You haven’t lived until you’ve have cloned beef wrapped in Sargassum spp.
Comment from: nina: i never heard we had a beef deficit issue…
Idiot, you’ve never heard of poor, hungry people either? “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to pull off of the internet now. You’re just too f-ing stupid.”