Would You Eat Cloned Meat?

No, I would not knowingly eat cloned meat or dairy. I will insist on labeling or disclosure from at least my retailer just as I expect labeling for irradiated foods. The over use of antibiotics and hormones in beef and dairy is scary enough let alone adding weird cloning cooties in the mix.

You're talking about genetic modifications not cloning in your examples - that can be good or bad but I don't see the need to confuse the two.

As far as cloned meat goes, I'd imagine it'd taste just like regular meat assuming they cloned a regular cow/pig/chicken. Remember they only clone the initial cells - the animal still has to grow up in a barn being fed corn or whatever (more likely body parts from other animals, but allow me my delusions).

I have not made my mind up about eating cloned meat yet, but I have discussed this with friends and some thought that eating cloned meat would be like a sin to eat it; some see this as advancement in technology. Maybe it’s some round about way they will have the ability to produce cloned people in the future, that's safe to mate with? Sounds Crazy huh, not really.

Once again the FDA is siding with big business over the people it is susposed to protect.

Cloned animals ARE inferior to natural born ones.

Remember Dolly, the first cloned sheep?

They had to put Dolly to sleep because of progressive lung disease.

Now how many sheep have you ever heard of being put to sleep for lung disease?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1741559.stm

Bottom line is that NO ONE KNOWS what eating cloned meat will lead too... The only thing we can count on, we can all be certain that cooperate profits will go up.

...eating non-cloned meat. Does that count?

SB, err, I mean, SB

I havent seen anything yet that leads me to believe cloned meat - in and of itself - would be any different from the host. How it is raised will most likely still be the main issue.

Its better than soylent green!

Lotso, have you ever raised sheep?
Ovine Progressive Pneumonia (OPP, Mpedi or Lunger disease)

This disease was once restricted to the western states, but is now very prevalent in the Midwest. It's usually a disease of older sheep. Lung infection causes sheep to waste away. In younger sheep it may express itself as mastitis and hard meaty udders that produce little or no milk. Since it can be passed from sheep to sheep by contact and via colostrum, culling of infected sheep is recommended.

link

Are these futuristic cloned people made just for mating purposes or will they be able to serve other functions as well?

I would eat it in a minute.

Who cares? Give me square oranges and straight bannanas for giggles and if they're going to clone animals they should modify them and make them more tender while they're at it.. but as long as there's always meat on the shelves I couldn't careless.

Why the heck people get in a panic or moral frenzy about all this is beyond me.

Pete

The production of non-cloned, "classic" meat is an enormous industry, especially the beef one. As stated in the article on food production on Practical Action's website,

In a world where the richest fifth eat 45 per cent of all meat and fish, while the poorest fifth consume just five per cent, and where four out of five malnourished children live in countries with food surpluses, there are clear problems in distribution. This means that any effort to improve agricultural productivity must go hand-in-hand with measures that address inequality.

The success or failure of small scale farmers in developing countries in managing the natural and biological resources available to us will determine the diversity of foods we eat, support our nutritional needs, produce many of the goods we live by, and, crucially, determine whether ecosystems are maintained and whether biodiversity is protected and conserved.

With all these problems, there is cloned meat now. Do we really need cloning and genetic engineering? The one and only thing when a government tells the public that this is OK, is because of MONEY and no other reason whatsoever. The new technologies brought into food production are just meant to speed up the production process, cut the costs and promote these same technologies so that other meat producers would buy them and eventually become dependent on them (think Monsanto here).

Besides, any studies made on health impact of cloned meat can be thrown out of the window right away. Why? Well, in order to determine the possible outcomes of the consumption of such food products, thorough, detailed studies that take years should be made, by independent scientific and medical teams. How can an individual know what will happen to her body after 1, 2 or even 10 years of eating cloned meat? What about women who are pregnant? About people who are sick, or under some form of treatment? How will their bodies react to this kind of meat? Etc, etc - a thousand questions are hanging in the air. Should I eat this frankenstein meat just because it got an "official" approval? NO WAY. War, the greatest catastrophe that can befall humanity has frequently had official "explanations" and "approvals" added to it so that people can accept it.

Is this cloned meat stuff any different? Different my ass.

P.S. I have a friend who became vegetarian just because he happened to work for a few months in a meat factory where he saw so much disgusting things in the production process. Add cloning to that - yuck!
P.P.S. I am not a vegetarian, but cloned meat gives me the creeps. Cloned human flesh hamburgers, anyone?

>>Lotso, have you ever raised sheep?

Actually I have.

The desease you mention is prevelavant where I live. in the western US, yet in all my years I have NEVER heard of a sheep being put to sleep for it.

Also the sheep Dolly was in Scotland, not in the Western US and she was never exposed to OPP.

Dolly developed the lung desease "out of the Blue"... She(Dolly) was kept in isolation.

Besides Lung Desease Dolly had arthritis...
Here is what one of the experts on cloning said...

"Professor Ian Wilmut, a member of the (cloning) team at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, said the condition may have arisen because of genetic defects caused by the cloning process."

Dolly sounds like a good meal to me... A little Lung Desease... a little arthritis... A few genetic defects... all just add to the flavor... yuck!

I don't even eat non - cloned meat.

Most of the meat eaten today is scraped off a slaughter house floor. Fuck that eyeballs, foreskins all available at your local Burger Store (no names ;) )

Skin me up and keep it natural

Is cloned meat different in some way on a cellular level than meat made from two animals copulating? I mean if I take two pieces of meat, remove the stickers, and do the ole' pepsi challenge on someone can they tell the difference? Can a scientist with a microscope see the difference? Is there some sort of litmus test available?

If cloned meat is found to be safe, there is probably going to have to be some economical incentive for people to buy it. Now if I am some sort of shady meat dealer sitting on a freezer full of cloned meat that just isn't selling this week, what's to stop me from buying some non-cloned meat stickers and putting it on the pack?

Will it become the Rollex watches of the future. Will our inboxes be full of N#t-cL0nnED mE@T spam in this future?

These same assholes at the FDA also said Fen-Phen was safe.

Well that's because a .22 is cheaper and quicker.

>may have arisen

When professors use words like, 'may have', it's because they're speaking out of an orifice reserved for waste.

Unless you raise it, slaughter it and cook it you don't know what you're eating, so why bother worrying now? How many years have gone by while you've eaten whatever you picked up at the market? Milk and beef generally come from mutant cows. Meat chickens are the result of careful breeding, egg layers the same. Artificial selection and cloning. It's the way of the future, the way of the future, the way of...

>Most of the meat eaten today is scraped off a slaughter house floor

There's a slaughterhouse two miles from me. The guy that owns the place would have a fit if dead meat even touched the floor, let alone was scraped off of it to be sold. I've seen more than one processing plant and they're cleaner than most people's kitchens.

...so many people would be freaked out by eating cloned meat that meat producers not involved with cloned meat will rush out labels saying as much, meaning that any meat not labeled as "clone-free" will assumed to be "cloned".

I wish I could clone my Xmas Prime Rib...it was mighty tasty:.)

Where the genetically engineered deer and Noah's Arc DNA project restoration antelope play...

Where seldom is heard,
A discouraging word,
Because vocal cords have mutated away!

FYI, I'll have a double clone burger with mutant cheese please

Cloning Cooties is the highbrow scientific term. ;-)

>mutant cows.

Yeah but conventional breeding allows for some time to see if the mutation takes or not over many generations. Cloning still has problems with deformity, premature aging and damage to the clones DNA. Cooties.

I ain't eating any vat grown meat. No sir. We have enough bad stuff in the food chain already without compounding it. We've done nicely without cloning food animals up till now so I see no reason why we should start. And where is the benefit to me and other consumers? If I had to guess, cloning won't benefit the consumer or the farmer but will only benefit big agri-business corporations, corporate/factory farms, and the genetic/pharma industry.

If they could clone it without a brain and tweak it to have less fat that sounds nasty, but would cause less suffering. I get guilty when I think how many animals had to die for me to live on this planet the 38 years I've been here. Just the number or prawns alone is mind boggling!

If I could borrow a bit of my opinion from Kurzweil while I chime in; what if the "cloned" meat was just the protein and fat cells, and not from a slaughtered animal? If we can develop a line of "perfect" steaks (accounting for variance of tastes), and replicate those on a cellular basis, without going through the process of raising and harvesting animals, not only would it eliminate a lot of vegetarianistic moral dilemnas, but would also be delicious and could be produced at a lower cost given enough time.

Cygnus would gladly eat replicated steaks if the quality is high enough and the cost is low enough.

so many people would be freaked out by eating cloned meat that meat producers not involved with cloned meat will rush out labels saying as much, meaning that any meat not labeled as "clone-free" will assumed to be "cloned".

The public is largely unaware and heavily manipulated though. Like most people probably do not know anything about rBGH (or why so many people are dying from cancer).

Genetically Modified (GM) grain is in the food chain already and you're probably already consuming livestock fed GM corn or soybeans which has a potential for more harm than a clone IMO.

Better living through science.

There's a real potential of starving to death...

If that's the problem without GM grains, then explain why those that are starving won't accept shipments of GM grains.

Maybe they'll like Dolly the sheep better.

someone that is starving that won't accept food. Just one.

What I don't understand is why they need to clone beef animals in teh first place. It's not like it's difficult to breed more cattle...or pigs or sheep or chickens. We don't have a shortage of them.

What's the advantage of cloning the animals for meat production in the first place?

You can pick and choose without the crapshoot that comes with select breeding. Latent flaws can (hopefully) be cloned out.

DG, ask me something hard next time...

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol16no4/164food2.htm

Several governments in the region objected to the GM grain, especially Zambia and Zimbabwe, the countries hardest hit by the drought. Citing health and environmental concerns, Zimbabwe blocked the GM food aid from entering the country. In Zambia, where some GM grain had already arrived, the government placed it under lock and key, banned its distribution and then blocked another 40,000 tonnes that were in the pipeline.

Appears a lot of people might want to eat but the government says "NO FOOD FOR YOU!"

Although nearly 30 per cent of Zambia's 10.2 million people are facing starvation, the government of President Levy Mwanawasa has bowed to the concerns about the potential hazards of genetic modification and has flatly refused to accept GM grain. President Mwanawasa has repeatedly said that until he has sufficient and credible information to the contrary, he will not risk feeding Zambians a "poison" that could have long-term effects.

Not eating has some serious long-term effects too, called DEATH.

You responded with shit about governments. I asked about people. Try again. If YOU were starving and I offered you my left ass cheek you'd grab a fork.

It's hard to find anything specific as starving people don't tend to blog from their mud huts, but one farmer claims he can't plant the crop if people won't accept it, implying they might not eat it.

http://www.africabiotech.com/news2/article.php?uid=106

At the other extreme, would you like your list of dead anorexics in chronological order? ;)

BTW, it depends, is your left ass cheek the one with the mole?

Nah, they don't even know they're starving.

No moles on either cheek but I hear moles are filled with protein.

I forgot this little tidbit from the wayback machine, when we were dropping food into Afghanistan that the hungry Afghans tore a bunch of it up and didn't eat it, especially the peanut butter!

There are also questions about how appropriate the food is. Afghans do not eat peanut butter, for example, and may not do so even if hungry.

However, I'm sure they weren't that close to starvation at that point as I can imagine it would take me a while to give in to to the foul Vegemite as a last resort only.

?Genetically engineered grain (GM) is not about producing more food for starving people.
It is about controlling the food supply.

All brands of GM corn and wheat, for example, can ONLY be grown from seed provided by the company that holds the patent. You can NOT grow GM grains from the seeds that are grown in the field.

So if a farmer can not afford to buy the seed from the company that owns the patent on the grain, they don’t grow any grain, unless the farmer could buy normal grain seed from someone... But why would anyone sell (or keep around) the ‘old’ normal grain seed when the GM stuff is sooo much cheaper and easier to grow?

What this story got to do with SEO/Webmaster?

?Genetically engineered grain (GM) is not about producing more food for starving people. It is about controlling the food supply.

It has a genetic code that stops reproduction, therefore locking people into the source of the seeds. However, it yields a lot more grain per acre and is pest and disease resistant, so it's a toss really.

The downside is what happens as the tinfoil hats claim, if that gene that makes the grain sterile somehow suddenly enters the ecosystem and the worldwide food chain becomes sterile.

Ooops!

What this story got to do with SEO/Webmaster?

SEO's and webmasters don't eat?

You clone websites, your chef serves cloned meat, all in a days work.

What this story got to do with SEO/Webmaster

Writing about a divisive topic teases the sensitive spots in a community and encourages debate and discussion.

Keyword research

metaphorical for duplicate content issues

I would eat two of them

What this story got to do with SEO/Webmaster?

Many of them find it interesting. Just look how many comments the thread has.

However, it yields a lot more grain per acre and is pest and disease resistant, so it's a toss really.

The downside is what happens as the tinfoil hats claim, if that gene that makes the grain sterile somehow suddenly enters the ecosystem and the worldwide food chain becomes sterile.

Also, don't forget that many diseases and parasites morph to match the weaknesses of their hosts, and thus over time certain foods may be genetically cornered into an indefensible position of weakness. And that is where diversity in the seed supply is important, such that any one disease or parasite or problem doesn't wipe (nearly) everything out.

Like an annoying meme, sometimes those genetic switches get into places where it should not....
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1130-03.htm

The arguments earlier in this post remind me of a story that one of my college profs related to us in a language/culture course a few years ago.

Apparently in an area of Mexico where the locals grew indigenous corn, they introduced a new type of corn (probably not GM) in an effort to provide healthier food, more crop, etc. The problem was that although the crop was larger, the food was more nutritious, the locals rejected the scientists and their new corn because it didn't taste similar to the "normal" corn, it didn't work well in their recipes for tortillas and related food products, and the seed/fruit of the corn were too large for what they normally ate as well. All in all, a fairly negative experience. The locals went back to their original corn.

I think that the teacher's point all those years back was something about taking the time to know your target audience if you are trying to help them. Similar to the example of peanut butter in the middle east...

And I agree with Seobook's post about genetic diversity. The problem with relying on specific stocks of food is that genetic problems are passed on from one generation to another. Parasites and other problems start to invade those niches and if the find it easier to succeed, they tend to become problems.

This is why large scale crop failures some times occur.. they're all using the same grain/seed/varieties and thus susceptible to the same blights.

In some ways it's good but imagine if humans were all clones of one another... one virus to take just about everyone out...