Cloned animals approved for human consumption

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Woo, now we get to eat the same burger twice!

No, really... ergh. Don't we make enough?
 
yeah, and it's expensive and just seems unnecessary. I guess it's so that the milk and meat and everything is "top quality", but seriously... why?
 
~Aurora~ said:
I'm sure it's safe, but do we really want to take that chance by feeding it to people until something bad happens. Hm...
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We've been feeding people for decades with whatever technology came along.

Antibiotics? Done that years ago. So long ago, antibiotic resistant bacteria is a problem now.

Hormones? Dairy cattle have been fed them--along with antibiotics--for decades.

Lets not forget the poultry and pork industries use the latest technology.

Lets not especially forget the agricultural products using genetically modified products.

We've been eating "unnatural" food for years! What makes you think cloning will be accepted any differently by the general market?
 
I have no objections to this. Clones are genetically identical to the organism that they were cloned from. Eating meat from a cloned cow is exactly the same as eating meat from the animal that was cloned. People get way too hung up over it. It's the same thing with stem cells. People just assume that both are automatically bad, when that's clearly not the case anymore.

People have been doing this for a long time, with vegetables first ironically. The genetic structures of many familiar fruits and vegetables have been altered so much now that some species (like the banana) could be extinct within a century, and others (such as the carrot) have even changed in colour! Did you know that carrots used to be purple? Corn is another good example of how we've altered it. It wasn't always pure yellow, or a yellow-white blend. It used to be an amalgamation of several different colours.

I've never understood why people are so set against eating cloned meat, when half of the food that they eat anyways has already been genetically altered. Yes, that's changing as of late with more people opting to buy natural and genetically unchanged fruits and vegetables from farms, but there's still a huge discrepancy between the two.

Why do you think that seed bank was established in Norway (I think it was Norway)? To preserve what little genetic diversity remains in the plants that we eat, that's why. Before people complain that cloned meat shouldn't be approved for consumption, they should look at practically every vegetable in the supermarket first >_<

Edit: Ah, looks like gadfly beat me to the punch. He makes a good point about factory-farmed meat too. Antibiotics are supposed to be used to fight off infection when it's already been established. In the case of factory farmed animals, they are pumped full of it in order to prevent themselves from getting sick in the first place. That's both damaging to the animal, and to the ones who eat the meat from the animal. How much of antibiotics and growth hormones (and every other damaging thing injected into the animal) is floating around in our bodies now? Our blood is literally swimming with toxins and antibiotics for some disease the majority of the public has never heard of that we can't catch in the first place because it only affects pigs or chickens, or some other animal.

Quite frankly, cloned meat is the least of our worries.
 
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Something is just fundamentally different about cloning animals, in my mind. Vegetables don't have central nervous systems or personalities. No, I never really ate any of the hormones and anti-biotics and GMO foods when I could help it, and now that I'm older and make my own decisions about food I'm even pickier. If I don't consume even organic milk products because there's a possibility of cow pus being in them, I'm sure as hell not going to start consuming it after they use cloned cows!

It just seems to me that a lot could go wrong with cloning... just like we've had bad results with using antibiotics and hormones in milk and meat (MRSA is caused, in part, by the anti-biotics put into animals and milk, and now people are dying from MRSA all over the news). I just don't want to be the test guinea pig to find out exactly WHAT will happen from the cloned animals.
 
Just so you know, MRSA is the result of all those people demanding antibiotics to treat their colds and flu due to viruses that are unaffected by antibiotics.
 
The cost of cloning an animal is unbelievable; several thousand dollars just to clone the animals into a fetus. Compare that with the amount of money spent for a fetus to develop without being cloned ($0).

Just because meat has been ruled to safe to eat, doesn't mean that any of it will actually be sold. Anybody fancy a $300 burger, or a $450 steak?

I honestly don't see a difference between plants and animals. How do we know for sure that plants can't feel anything? We're animals; we know that all animals have a central nervous system and "feel things". Yet plants have also reacted to stimuli such as music (and other factors too). How is that possible if they don't feel anything? No, they don't have hearts, but here's a little trivia: plants actually have their own version of a bloodstream. Two versions actually; the xylem and the phloem.

And at the same time, some animals "feel" differently than others. Reptiles can recover from injuries that would kill mammals. And I've lost count of the number of people who will refuse to eat meat, but then gladly swat and kill an annoying fly or mosquito. Hypocritical much? They're still animals, but people don't seem to care much about killing them.
 
Matkin22 said:
The cost of cloning an animal is unbelievable; several thousand dollars just to clone the animals into a fetus. Compare that with the amount of money spent for a fetus to develop without being cloned ($0).
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You're assuming cloning doesn't make financial sense to the person paying for it. It wouldn't happen if somebody didn't think they would make money.

Matkin22 said:
Just because meat has been ruled to safe to eat, doesn't mean that any of it will actually be sold. Anybody fancy a $300 burger, or a $450 steak?
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Yeah, right. People are spending big bucks to be able to sell $300 burgers and $450 steaks. Kinda ruins the idea of investing money in cloning.
 
Nah, I don't kill bugs, either. Worst case scenario my brother or a guy friend takes care of it, but otherwise I just ignore the pesky creature.

And just so you know, gadfly, antibiotics in animals also contribute to MRSA. Of course people taking them for viruses (and doctors who prescribe them for viruses, shame on them! they should know better) and colds are the main contributors, but anti-bacterial soaps and hand sanitizers and people eating steady amount of antibiotics aren't helping at all. =/

A lot of the reason I don't eat meat is because I think that the grain used to feed the cow I would be eating would be better spent feeding hungry people around the world. I just feel better personally if I don't eat meat for that reason. With the cost of cloning being as insane as it is, it doesn't sound like it will help fix things on that front, either.

Plus with so many people being squicked out about the cloned cows, I do wonder if the cost of cloning a cow on top of the loss the meat and dairy market may sustain will do more harm to the factories than good. Is it really worth messing with? Putting my own personal opinions on cloning aside, is this really a good idea for anyone? It's not curing cancer or stopping world hunger. Why spend $20,000 on something that might decrease your profits?
 
The minute I saw the title of the thread I knew somebody post saying they were grossed out by the idea. Like the others have already noted, if the meat was to be consumed by someone he would have no way of knowing the difference.

All my other points have already been discussed. Point is, we've been eating vegetables and fruits who have been altered tremendously. Maize used to be tiny before Europeans colonized North America, it's massive in comparisson today.

Also, I read somewhere that plants "scream" when they're cut or damaged. The sound can't be picked up by our ears obviosuly, but sensitive equipment can.
 
Matkin22 said:
I have no objections to this. Clones are genetically identical to the organism that they were cloned from. Eating meat from a cloned cow is exactly the same as eating meat from the animal that was cloned. People get way too hung up over it. It's the same thing with stem cells. People just assume that both are automatically bad, when that's clearly not the case anymore.
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I agree, but I don't want to say too much more because I don't want to turn this into a debate on what is "right" to eat or not.

But I will say that this is interesting, because it made me wonder... Do clones have rights, and should they have rights? I mean, when the price for the process goes down, and KFC develops their farms with cloned chickens, would peta mind? Also if more so the chicken is cloned and grown only to the parts that they usually use in their chicken wings.. would those things have rights? They'd be closer to plants.. would that change the view points of Vegans? I'm trying hard not to turn this into a debate, but it's a cool subject.

Still, I think people are too hung up on the morality of cloning. It's not immoral, humans make more people and animals all the time, it's called breeding. :p Technically, you can still argue cloning as natural because a human being is contained in nature. :p Even if you think it is religiously damning, it still would not make you "god-like" to create a human, because you aren't creating them from nothing or from other materials. (for example, you aren't converting rocks into chickens)

However it's even more important in human farming parts because it would make 100% compatible parts for operations of cancer victims or people needing blood or bone marrow. It could save so many lives (theoretically).
 
First, no, it wouldn't change the viewpoints of vegans. =P I'm not even a hardcore vegan, but no, I would never eat an animal, even cloned. I think an animal is an animal is an animal. The same way I'll eat vegetables whether they're clones or not, in the same way I *won't* eat animals, cloned or not. If Ash and his friends don't eat pikachu burgers on principle, what would make it okay for them to eat cloned-pikachu burgers?

but would the people have rights? It doesn't seem very fair to create a person just for their parts or so you can experiment on them. I think cloned animals should be treated with the same respect other animals have. From your perspective, if we see it as natural and the same as natural breeding, shouldn't the offspring have the same rights as the naturally bred animals? ^_^

Come on, people-- did we learn nothing from Pokemon the First Movie and Mewtwo Returns? =P
 
This isn't The Island. A cloned human would be given all the same rights as a human born from sexual intercourse. Why? Because they're still human!

What those rights are that they are given would of course depend on where they were cloned though...
 
I think this should be used more on species that we made nearly extinct, not those we mass produce. Anyway, with all the hormones pumped into the food I eat, I really don't see why I should object to eating a cloned cow.

It's also funny how someone brought up Rights for Cloned Humans. I had this debate in an english presentation a long time ago. They kept saying that clones would go berserk and kill everybody. And they wouldn't believe me when I said that a clone is practically an identical twin, except made years later. They will have a separate consciousness from you, and no they aren't guaranteed to turn out the same way. So what I've learned from that debate is that although we would give clones equal rights, it will take forever before people actually see them as people.
 
~Aurora~ said:
Come on, people-- did we learn nothing from Pokemon the First Movie and Mewtwo Returns? =P
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That's exactly what I was going to cite in my reply, and then I read this. MSB is what got me interested in bioethics.



Simply put, how does the FDA really know this is safe? Cloned food is relatively new technology. They wouldn't DARE do a surgical procedure that only has a few years of research on a human being without telling them and getting their consent, so why is it okay to sell cloned meat- a relatively new development- without giving people a choice? If they want to sell it, that's fine. But we, the consumers, should have some say in whether or not we're comfortable with it until more is known.
 
"L" said:
I think this should be used more on species that we made nearly extinct
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So we can eat them? Or to bring them back from the brink?
Either way, it won't help much. Cloning individuals of a species that is about to go extinct might make the situation worse. No variety in the gene pool would make the species an easier target for extinction if a certain trait is unfavourable. I personally believe people should be cloned in the off chance a person may need tranfusions or, in a more extreme case an organ. I can't make sense of any other use of cloning, especially other animals.
 
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