30 Aug 2006
Cloned Beef Coming Soon?

There are so many things wrong with this on so many levels that I don't know where to start.

First off, apparently the cloned beef is awaiting FDA approval for safety. How's that? What could cloning possibly do that would affect the safety of the meat? This is just paranoia - but, in this case, I'm kinda happy for the paranoid, because they're slowing it down.

Line breeding for enhancement is a time honored method of raising animals: you can find the gory technical details here if you're interested. We try not to line breed here at Hammerstead, on the premise that if it's a bad idea for humans, it can't be a good idea for cattle. It's true that you'll get some enhancement of good traits this way: but you'll also get a higher percentage of genetic defect, and in our opinion that percentage is unacceptable. But no matter how rigorous the line breeding program, you'll never get a genetic clone.

Cloning, as in other cases of genetic engineering, will effect biodiversity in a big way if it catches on. Imagine whole herds that are genetically identical - not just similar, not just related, but identical. No natural breeding program is possible without the highest degree of consanguinity between the mates: you'd effectively be telling your cattle to go fuck themselves!

That's a bad idea. A very bad idea.

But an even worse idea is "to grow just the meat itself without the animal". What the Hel is the meat, anyway? It is the animal - no animal, no meat. This "grown" and "harvested" steak would be the mammalian equivalent of tofu - and the texture would probably be more similar than it's proponents would care to admit.

The whole "ethical" problem with meat eating is nothing short of ridiculous: eating is killing, pure and simple. Do these "moral vegetarians" really think plants aren't alive? Do they believe that a cat commits a moral evil when it eats a mouse? There are vegetarians who won't eat meat because of peculiar digestive issues, and there are those who won't eat factory farmed meats, milk or poultry. That's understandable. There are serious ethical issues that are raised by "modern" farming and ranching practices. But I cannot for the life of me understand the "ethical problem" of simply killing for food. Every breath you take, every move you make, everything you eat: you're killing something.

Does anyone seriously think an individual carrot, for example, doesn't want to survive? Try stressing it - watch it grow deeper. Pull off it's top - watch it grow another. And when you pull it from the ground and slice it for you salad, imagine it screaming for it's very life, because it probably is, if we but had the ears to hear it.

The only possible ethical objection to killing for food is intra-species predation. Which is incredibly uncommon in any event in the animal kingdom for creatures above the level of the insects or a few reptiles, not counting carrion or egg eating. That can be framed as a species survival issue - things that eat each other have less of a chance of survival than those that don't, especially given the lower rates of offspring in the higher animals.

Finally, thinking that cloned beef would help in disease resistance is exactly wrong: monocultures are more susceptible to disease, not less.

To sum up, this piece points out many if not all of the problems our culture has with it's food supply. From a reliance on technology to "solve" non-existent problems to the denial of the reality of death, it covers all the bases.

According to this article at Popular Science cloned beef may be coming soon. It talks about using meat within 48 hours of slaughter to allow cloning the best possible specimens, something that is not possible to determine while the animal is still alive. Apparently only 1 in 8000 animals is truly the best. Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal. That would end all the ethical issues with raising an animal for food, potential issues from mad cow disease, bird flu and whatever the next media induced panic is.

(link) [Slashdot]

22:16 /Agriculture | 6 comments | permanent link