Cloned Cows - Eat and drink?

Unknown Soldier

Unknown Soldier

Veteran
So This morning on Sky News they had the CBS News insert where they were talking about How scientists have been cloning a lot of cows .. and that the cloning process was now easy to use.

They also went on to say that the FDA was now looking into the milk and the meat that the cows produced to see if it met requirements .. since these products could be used in future to feed the masses. It also said that the FDA could reach a decision within a years time.

So my question. Would you eat cloned meat? Would you drink cloned milk?

Meat and milk from cloned bulls and cows should be safe to eat, a study suggests today.

The pilot study is the first to examine specific proteins and nutrients in the milk and meat from cloned animals and marks the start of efforts to plug an important gap in research that may one day lead to regulatory approval of clone-derived food.

In America and Japan hundreds of elite animals, such as breeding bulls, have already been cloned and there are more than 1,000 worldwide, said Prof Xiangzhong (Jerry) Yang, director of the University of Connecticut's Centre for Regenerative Biology.
Click to expand...

News Source: Telegraph

US
 
Stick vitamin E and way more than natural calcium into the milk and I'm all for it, after lots of investigations and trials.
 
I think the question should be "Why would you need cloned milk or meat?"

After all, the old-fashioned way of breeding seems to work absolutely fine. It's almost as if they've invented the cloning technology and are seeking a use for it! Ridiculous.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Well they say that shortage of milk and meat might be an issue in the near future.

US
Click to expand...

But why? Shortage of milk and meat has never been a problem before now and it's not exactly rocket science to breed cows.

I suppose they might be talking about 'cloning' female cows so they don't end up with bullocks to get more milk but then where would we get the beef from? :?

It just seems to me that they've developed the science and they are now trying to find a use for it rather than doing it the other way round.
 
OK, I'll be serious this time.

I'd say this is a lot less controversial than genetically modified food.
Yes, in a way you could say that this is a kind of "genetical modification", but since you move the whole "software" unmodified form one cell to another, there's less risk for unsuspected side effects.

(But there's of course still the "playing God" aspect of it for those religiously inclined.)


But I'm not sure it's a good thing if it becomes the norm.
In normal breeding, you mix and match cows and bulls with good genes. And then take the best of the next generation to get the next breeding material. In a way helping evolution to get the "optimal" species (in productrion terms).

With cloning you find a cow with good genes, and keep doing exact copies. If then someone markets their "perfect cow" well, you could have a situation were a lot of the gene pool disappears. And then you could get problems with inbreeding if you want to start breeding again.
 
The thing is there is no way to guarantee that a clone will be exactly the same as the orginial ie you'd still have to raise the damn cow from calf!!! Anything can happen in that time period for growth from disease to whatever. As a matter of fact some clones don't even survive for long after they're born suffering from rare diseases. The important thing here is how well will this clone be able to fight off future disease???
 
Perhaps in addition to cloning, they will genetically modify the cows, too? Certain jellyfish have luminous cells so mixing the genes of these two creatures could enable farmers to find their cattle easily in the dark.

If you wanted to push it, I suppose you could also end up with jellyfish to milk but that could be tricky. :p

I just can't believe there is any serious discussion about cloning cattle. The benefits are negligible and the risks are huge, so why bother?

If people are really worried about 'feeding the masses', they should be growing more crops and not raising more animals. Some easily-found stats about Soya Beans, for example:

"Soya is the richest natural vegetable food. The dried bean is 18–22% fat, 35% carbohydrate, and one hectare of soya beans yields 162 kg/357 lb of protein (compared with 9 kg/20 lb per hectare for beef)."

Note: I'm not a veggie - like meat as much as the next man.
 
Mariner said:
I think the question should be "Why would you need cloned milk or meat?"
Click to expand...
Exactly. This is a completely useless, pointless technology with no possible practical use whatsoever. Horny bulls will take care of any breeding issues we might encounter, now or in the future (bulls are always horny).
 
Well meat quality is partially genetic so that's why you would want it over noncloned meat assuming you've picked a cow with superior meat qualities to clone from. It's the same as in other kinds of foods. Some genetically engineered vegetables taste better than some nongenetically engineered ones.
 
Although meat quality may be partly genetic, meat quality itself isn't important as far as many producers are concerned. The vast majority of meat eaten is just intensively-raised rubbish packed full of god knows what drugs (plenty of growth hormones in the US, I understand?) and just stuck in fast food.

Using cloned cattle wouldn't improve this stuff one little bit.

Higher quality meat (special breeds, etc) is reared less intensively and the market for this wouldn't accept cloned meat anyway I'd imagine.

Learning to clone animals was an interesting scientific endeavour which hasn't really got any uses (unless you've seen "The Sixth Day" :p) - now they are just trying to justify the expense.
 
Mariner said:
Although meat quality may be partly genetic, meat quality itself isn't important as far as many producers are concerned. The vast majority of meat eaten is just intensively-raised rubbish packed full of god knows what drugs (plenty of growth hormones in the US, I understand?) and just stuck in fast food.

Using cloned cattle wouldn't improve this stuff one little bit.

Higher quality meat (special breeds, etc) is reared less intensively and the market for this wouldn't accept cloned meat anyway I'd imagine.

Learning to clone animals was an interesting scientific endeavour which hasn't really got any uses (unless you've seen "The Sixth Day" :p) - now they are just trying to justify the expense.
Click to expand...

It's not without use. Domestic livestock have been subject to selective breeding for a long time, with modern technology allowing for more control and shorter delays.

Livestock breeders have used reproductive technology intensively for a long time. Sperm lines for artificial insemination allow for more options and tighter control of the selective breeding process. An individual bull's death, or long distances no longer impede the attempt to breed better animals--so long as the breeder can foot the bill.

Cloning would take this one step further by allowing faster and more secure propogation of desired breed stock. Desireable traits wouldn't take multiple generations to get a good breed population, and death or disease wouldn't threaten the loss of a good specimen before it reaches maturity.

A number of the difficulties in breeding such as limited numbers of prime individuals, long waits for sexual maturity, and fixed latency of pregnancies can be reduced with cloning. While a clone mother still must gestate for a full term, having five of them can allow for more breeding from a known genotype, rather than a single cow produce calves over the course of years. Multiple individuals must still grow up, but upon reaching maturity more can be done at once.

The costs involved are high, however, and considering the already limited genetic diversity of livestock, care must be taken to keep from homogenizing things further.
 
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