quote:

Cloned Bull The bum rap on cloned food. By William Saletan Updated Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007, at 1:24 AM ET Which came first, the chicken or the egg? People have puzzled over that question for at least 2,000 years. In the eternal cycle of natural reproduction, they saw no answer. But the cycle turns out not to be eternal. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration tentatively approved the use of cloned animals to make food. Natural reproduction is giving way to artificial reproduction. And with the new era comes a new question: Which came first, the steer or the steak? Case in point: Elvis. He's a 19-month-old Angus calf. You can view him on the Web site of ViaGen, a cloning company. In a recent slide presentation from the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the caption below his photo reads, "Elvis was cloned from a side of Prime Yield Grade 1 beef." No joke: The calf came from the beef. And Elvis is no freak show. He's a business plan. "Some of your animals have more income potential than others," ViaGen reminds farmers. "Our services help you identify, preserve, and reproduce the genetics of those animals." If a steer is already dead, no problem. In fact, the best way to judge its steakworthiness is to cut it open and hang it on a hook. That's what happened to the original incarnation of Elvis. "Biopsy samples should be collected from your animal as soon as possible," ViaGen advises. If you like that side of beef and want another just like it, we can grow it for you. A steer from a steak from a steer. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has re-entered the building. The political fight over animal cloning is just beginning. It's a lot like the fight over human cloning, except that the roles are reversed. Right-wing groups and Republican senators fanned fear and ignorance about human cloning; left-wing groups and Democratic senators are fanning fear and ignorance about animal cloning. Moderates on both sides get trampled. So do principles. The same liberals who demand stem-cell research using human embryos and who blasted the FDA for delaying approval of emergency contraception now accuse the FDA of recklessly approving cloned food. The left-wingers want the FDA, Congress, and President Bush to keep clones off the market. Their case, laid out in a petition to the FDA, is a mess of anecdotes, obsolete data, speculation, and ideology. Like right-wingers in the human cloning debate, they expect the government to honor even their "religious" objections. But their strongest argument is that cloned food is unsafe, since cloning, unlike fertilization, often fails to reprogram genes for normal embryonic development. It's a sensible worry, but the facts don't bear it out. The FDA's review, based on exhaustive and fully disclosed analysis of scientific journal articles, health records, blood samples, and meat and milk composition, found no "food consumption risks or subtle hazards in healthy clones of cattle, swine, or goats." The agency concluded that "food from the sexually reproduced offspring of clones is as safe as food that we eat every day." Why don't reprogramming errors taint your food? Because if they're serious, they kill the animal before it's old enough to be milked or eaten, or they cause defects that make the animal flunk federal food safety inspections. They don't carry over to a clone's offspring, since fertilization, like rebooting, cleans up programming errors. And the offspring are where the milk and meat will come from. ViaGen charges $15,000 to clone a steer. You don't butcher a $15,000 clone. You use it for breeding. Critics say cloning often causes health problems for cloned animals and their surrogate mothers. That's true, but less so in some species, and the rate of complications is falling as the technology improves. Opponents of cloning also suggest we should ban it because it's unethical "to alter the essential nature of animals." Essential nature? We've been breeding animals for 15,000 years. We've been artificially inseminating them for nearly 700 years. Most apples, bananas, grapes, peaches, and potatoes are clones, and a lot of meat sold today was produced through in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, or embryo splitting. The silliest rap on cloning is that it offers "no consumer benefits." That's insane. Cloning means total genome control. It bypasses the uncertainties of breeding. It also improves breeding, since five clones of your best bull or cow produce five times as much sperm or eggs. Theoretically, you can target any trait for cloning: more muscle, less fat, more omega-3 acids. You can even help the environment by cloning animals that eat grass instead of grain. In principle—with apologies to Bill Clinton—there's nothing wrong with biotechnology that can't be cured by what's right with biotechnology. Yes, poorly cultivated clones may require antibiotics. But efficient cloning can reduce the use of antibiotics, not to mention growth hormones, by spreading healthier genes. Yes, factory farming can transmit mad cow disease. But guess what blocked mad cow disease in a study released this week? A combination of genetic engineering and cloning. Cloning can be humane, too. Farmers don't want their animals to get sick. Instead of calves that are born big, they'd rather get calves that are born small—so their mothers can deliver them easily—and grow quickly thereafter. Dairy farmers prefer female calves to males, which get slaughtered for veal. Cloning could address all three problems. Biotechnology might even help us grow meat without growing and killing whole animals. Messing with nature at this level is never simple. It requires ongoing debate, monitoring, and regulation. But we're not even getting that debate. Instead, opponents are relying, as they have in the human cloning debate, on the sheer fact that cloning freaks people out. To reinforce this revulsion and intimidate regulators, politicians, and food producers, they constantly emphasize surveys showing that Americans are uncomfortable with cloned food, think it's unsafe, and won't buy it. As though polls settled the matter. As though the FDA should put science before politics, but only when it suits liberals. Yes, we're scared of cloned food. But according to the same polls, most of us have heard little about animal biotechnology, don't know biotech food is already in supermarkets, and, against all reason, are more afraid of cloning animals than of genetically engineering them. Don't be cowed. Question your fears. That's the difference between us and the animals. A version of this piece appears in the Washington Post Outlook section.

>>Source<<

I tend to agree with author on this one; most people are ignorant of the current food processes and to have them suddenly come out as experts?
I think he's right, subconsciously people are freaked out by the whole thing.
I mean, where do they keep the pods?!?....

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(Elvis should have been called Donald or something by the way I'll explain later lol)

I dunno think of a future where genetic diveristy is null. I mean you don't see many wild cows right? In other words they are a product (well obviously but all of them are). Now if you have a "perfect" design for each specific sort of cow surely every grippy farmer in the world is gonna want to have THAT cow (I know breeding has taken place before but it was natural). Best case a small range of cows for each purpose (beef dairy so on).

Whats wrong with that? Well to my mind if every cow is genticly the same then they are pretty much the same cow (they are clones after all). So you'll get every single Aberdeen Angus cow being the same cow why bother paying for new slightly different cows to have their DNA brushed up your a business?

Supose on the plus side it'll probebly lead to DNA preservation farms which will get subsidised to keep on the "woefully sub-standard" breeds which have lasted for what thousands of years? It'll be like organic is now a highly priced N(natural)DNA Meat sticker along side Organic and the local Nationality it'll form a tiny but loud market supose it'll keep the diveristy though.

As for the ill effects Dolly the sheep died very soon after the "mummy" Dolly why? The gentic age was taken over what other effects are possible? Can't tell until you've had long long studies, you can estimate but you can't know.

Why should Elvis have been called Donald or something? Because Aberdeen Angus are from Scotland and Scotland what were the first mammal (Dolly the sheep) cloned from cells taken from another born animal.

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r >>Source<< I tend to agree with author on this one; most people are ignorant of the current food processes and to have them suddenly come out as experts? I think he's right, subconsciously people are freaked out by the whole thing. I mean, where do they keep the pods?!?....

Nice article. The Mrs. and I were just talking about this yesterday. She asked me if I was for or against cloning animals for food, and I admitted I hadn't given it much thought. I still haven't fully considered this topic enough to be swayed one way or the other, but my initial thought process is I think it has some very good potential. In fact I'm not exactly sure what viable arguments are used against the process, especially when considering the current practices of animal harvesting today.

The one area I DO think it would be of the most vital importance is seafood. This ecological system must not be overlooked, and I think it could greatly benefit our environment as a whole if cloning research expanded a bit more here. The land population in some species are by and large not threatened by our practices, but the same cannot be stated about the seas. I would very much like to see more done specifically for this environment.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...in_page_id=1770

Cloning opens door to 'farmyard freaks'

Moves to clone and genetically modify farm livestock have opened the door to the creation of "Farmyard Freaks", experts have warned.

News that the daughter of a US clone cow has been born on a British farm has moved the issue from science fiction to consumer reality.

A former government adviser has painted a nightmarish picture of "zombie" and fast-growing supersize animals.

Professor Ben Mepham, of Nottingham University, said the impact of bio-engineering, creating GM and cloned animals, is huge.

Factory farming techniques, most commonly used with pigs and chicken, often involve keeping animals confined in cramped conditions.

For pigs, who are highly intelligent, these conditions can lead to stress and aggression.

However, GM scientists are actively investigating ways to remove the stress and aggression gene from animals, effectively turning them into complacent zombies.

The professor said it might become technically possible to produce "animal vegetables" - beasts which are "highly prolific and oblivious to their physical and mental status".

However, he argued that while this could reduce the pain and stress of factory farming, this did not mean it should be allowed to develop without question.

The professor of applied bioethics warned that many of the GM experiments on animals have resulted in cruelty, producing mutants or animals which grow so large in the womb that they can only be surgically removed.

He said: "The question of whether humanity should take it upon ourselves to alter animals by GM, involving in many cases mixing the genes of different species - and sometimes those of human origin - is undoubtedly critical for many people."

The professor said that religious groups would see it as "an attempt to usurp God's role" while others would be unhappy about "so fundamentally altering the natural order".

Prof Mepham, is a former member of the Government's Agriculture, Environment Biotechnology Commission.(AEBC)

In 2002, the Commission called on the government to set up a regulatory body to police developments such as GM and clone farming.

However, this was ignored by ministers, who subsequently scrapped the AEBC after it issued a number of reports challenging government policy in areas such as GM crops and food.

The AEBC called for a ban on the creation of "intrinsically objectionable" creatures - such as pigs and cows modified not to feel stress in factory farming conditions.

And it demanded separate farming and labelling of food from these creatures to allow consumers to make a choice about what they are eating.

In 2002, the AEBC said the need to have in place a regulatory regime in place was "urgent" in order to prevent a repeat of the GM crop debacle.

In that case GM plants were already in British shops before there had been sufficient research about the impact on human health or the environment.

Despite these clear warnings, the government's food and farming department, DEFRA, refused to set up any kind of watchdog.

The result is that meat and milk from GM or cloned animals could be arriving on dinner plates in as little as two years.

The executive director of the Food Ethics Council, Dr Tom MacMillan, said: "Cloning raise animal welfare concerns, both for the clones and for their parents.

"It also underlines how far removed industrial food production is from what consumers actually want."

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Animals that are vegetables...Hmmm...Not sure where I stand.
Would life be better for them if they weren't normal and
aggresive, not like being caged up or just be content to sit
there. Man it sucks to be them. Wish we could just grow meat
and not have to kill a living entity I guess lol. Guess I
lean more to making them vegetables.

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