Cloned T-Bone?
posted by Liberal Seagull at 10:56 AM
The FDA recently gave preliminary approval to meat and milk from cloned livestock, saying the products from cloned animals were indistinguishable from products from animals bred the usual way. (This makes sense, since a clone is essentially an identical twin, albeit one born at a different time than its "sibling.") This has been a tremendously controversial decision, and I'm not entirely sure why. We already eat food from cloned plants all the time, after all. (You don't really think seedless grapes reproduce on their own, do you?)
My guess is that people see this as a proxy battle for genetically engineered foods, which is a different technology, but one that's developed by many of the same companies that are also pursuing cloning. The public is not particularly good at distinguishing similar-sounding issues and responding to them in a nuanced way, and activist groups often make no effort to explain the differences, probably fearing it might dilute the impact of their message.
There's also probably a religious aspect -- people who see cloning as tampering with God's creation, or who see acceptance of cloned animals as part of a slippery slope towards human cloning. Similar objections were raised when Robert Bakewell introduced selective breeding methods in the 18th century. In what was perhaps a bit of anthropomorphization, many raised particular moral objections to the practice of "breeding in," where a parent is bred with their offspring to help reinforce a desirable trait.
On the whole, I think the attention being paid to cloning right now is unfortunate. For one thing, it's a tempest in a teapot. Very little product from actual cloned animals will ever make it into the food supply -- it's mainly going to be used to aid selective breeding, so it's the offspring of clones that we'll be eating. Activists would be better off spending their time on genuinely worrisome issues, like the overuse of antibiotics. A stance that opposes any and all new food technologies, on general principle, doesn't benefit anyone.
My guess is that people see this as a proxy battle for genetically engineered foods, which is a different technology, but one that's developed by many of the same companies that are also pursuing cloning. The public is not particularly good at distinguishing similar-sounding issues and responding to them in a nuanced way, and activist groups often make no effort to explain the differences, probably fearing it might dilute the impact of their message.
There's also probably a religious aspect -- people who see cloning as tampering with God's creation, or who see acceptance of cloned animals as part of a slippery slope towards human cloning. Similar objections were raised when Robert Bakewell introduced selective breeding methods in the 18th century. In what was perhaps a bit of anthropomorphization, many raised particular moral objections to the practice of "breeding in," where a parent is bred with their offspring to help reinforce a desirable trait.
On the whole, I think the attention being paid to cloning right now is unfortunate. For one thing, it's a tempest in a teapot. Very little product from actual cloned animals will ever make it into the food supply -- it's mainly going to be used to aid selective breeding, so it's the offspring of clones that we'll be eating. Activists would be better off spending their time on genuinely worrisome issues, like the overuse of antibiotics. A stance that opposes any and all new food technologies, on general principle, doesn't benefit anyone.
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