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| Posted: May 27, 2008 |
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In January, the Food and Drug Administration decided that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat. Two experts on different sides of the issue -- a veterinarian whose company produces cloned animals and an advocate for clone-free food -- answered your questions. |
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| Joe Doherty of Arlington, Va. asks |
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| Will the preconceived biases of the American public relating to cloned animal products prohibit us from coming to a logical conclusion that cloning animals to create a more sustainable food supply is a win, win situation? Your comments please. |
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| Don Coover responds: |
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 I agree with you, sir. I think cloning technologies will enable the nation's food producers to produce a more reliable, useful, satisfactory product, and do it with fewer animals, at less cost. There are a lot of refinements to be made to the technology, but as with all things technical, progress can be made with effort and time.
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| Jaydee Hanson responds: |
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 The genetic engineering companies working on plants kept promising us plants that were more environmentally friendly and drought resistant, but instead gave us plants that promote their pesticides. I suspect that cloning will follow a similar trajectory. I guess I have a different idea of what a more sustainable food supply might be. If the cloning industry is primarily cloning animals that have the attributes that we U.S. Americans value, I don't see that they will be producing sustainable food for the world. Our fatty animals with marbled meat (I love a good Angus steak, but...) are not the answer for world food needs. There are already more than 250 breeds of cattle alone, to say nothing of sheep, goats, pigs. Within those traditional breeds, there are strains resistant to most animal diseases. (The only new idea from the cloners is to make animals resistance to mad cow disease, something we would not have in the first place if some researchers had not thought it was a good idea to feed cows ground up sick sheep.) There are strains able to survive in drought environments. Moreover, in the wake of high fuel and feed prices, traditional farmers in the Third World are going to be looking to go back to animals that can eat local grasses, plow, produce milk, and then at the end of their work life be used for meat. This is not the animal that we have bred for rapid weight gain is a concentrated animal feeding operation, but in a world where fuel and feed costs are high, it would be more sustainable than our system of meat production.
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