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Guess What's Coming to Dinner? Cloned Beef! Yummy!
The FDA wants to approve the sale of meat from cloned animals and their offspring. So the Los Angeles Times arranged a dinner party to which I devoutly wish I had been invited--one in which diners compared steaks from conventionally raised cows and those from the offspring of cloned cows. The "cloned" meat didn't actually come from a cloned cow (they are too expensive to just slaughter and eat), but from cows born using the sperm of a clone of the prize winning bull, Full Flush.
Nutrition scold, Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, refused the invitation to dine, telling the LA Times:
"I'd rather eat my running shoes than eat meat from a cloned animal."
On the other hand, USC sociologist Barry Glassner, author of The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong, accepted with gusto. Glassner clearly understands interest group politics.
A survey last year by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64% of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning...
Glassner, the sociologist, was quick to assign blame for what he perceived as scare-mongering. "It comes from politicians and advocacy groups that make the association." ...
"You think the word 'clone' just came out of the sky and we're afraid of it?" Glassner responded. "There are a lot of interests that benefit from the hysteria. Politicians sound like they're for safe food, and they're going to protect us from this Frankenstein future that we hear about. And beyond that, there is a premium that many people will pay for meat that's labeled as noncloned. The organic industry — they're thrilled about this."
Was there a difference in taste? None. So that raises the next question: why pay more for "cloned" beef? Gustatory novelty, perhaps? In any case, steaks from cloned cattle will certainly taste better than Schlosser's Adidas.
Whole LA Times article here.
VM|3.5.07 @ 11:22AM|#
Will a cloned, revitalized James Garner do the ads for
this?
(think: the celeb heads in Futurama)
Dan T.|3.5.07 @ 11:36AM|#
"There are a lot of interests that benefit from the
hysteria. Politicians sound like they're for safe food, and they're
going to protect us from this Frankenstein future that we hear
about. And beyond that, there is a premium that many people will
pay for meat that's labeled as noncloned. The organic industry -
they're thrilled about this."
But of course there are no interest groups that would benefit from
cloned meat being approved for sale.
And where's the "hysteria", anyway?
ed|3.5.07 @ 11:38AM|#
64% of Americans were uncomfortable with animal
cloning
And animal slaughtering. And animal birthing. And cleaning up the
animal manure. In other words, most Americans are uncomfortable
with farming, which is why most of us get fat at a nice desk job
and keep our hands clean.
|3.5.07 @ 11:43AM|#
Which reminds me, does the Religious Right know it's still legal in the U.S. to practice animal husbandry?
|3.5.07 @ 11:43AM|#
It is not cloning that is going to make the impact, it is growing meat, and especially fish, artificially in laboratories. That is coming in a few decades or maybe sooner. Imagine if we didn't have to fish out the oceans for seafood but instead could just grow shrimp or Chilean Sea Bass in laboratories leaving the ocean to return to a more pristine state. Or, instead of having huge feedlots and the accompanying pollution have steaks you could grow in a few hours in your own house. That would be a real improvment.
|3.5.07 @ 11:45AM|#
I pretty much limit my meat purchases to free range/cage free
organics, but that's mainly for reasons of environmental impacts
and animal welfare. I'd have no problem eating a cloned cow that
was raised properly - it would be a damn sight better than a
"normal" cow raised in a factor farm.
In related news, the FDA is about to approve the bovine use of a
new antibiotic, despite a majority of panelists voting to deny
authorization for animal use based on concerns about breeding
resistant strains of microbes.
tros|3.5.07 @ 11:45AM|#
Cross posted this on facebook:
Leftist sisters and brothers, luddite attitude is RETARDED, sorry,
but I'm afraid it is completely counterproductive to adopt a
catergorically primitivist attitude towards biotechnology IN
GENERAL. Considering that Boston is probably one, if not THE
biotechnology capital of the world, it would make much more sense
to invent some sort of individualist code of ethics for scientists
to follow, rather than attempt to coerce and steal from biotech
corporations. We absolutely should be shouting down their lies, but
violence begets violence and even the threat of violence will
create fear.
There is nothing wrong with genetically engineering plants,
animals, and human beings in a safe way. Even there isn't a safe
way yet, we can invent a safe way. If you think this is impossible,
you are retarded. If you think peacefull, nonviolent researchers
should be stopped because of YOUR paranoia, you need to educate
yourself and advocate positively for positive applications of
biotechnology.
Also, in case you hadn't realized, Che Guevara was a violent,
authoritarian ape. Cuba is not a nice place to live at all. If you
adorn your person with his image this is a clear indicator that you
suffer from subconscious fascist tendencies. The best cure I know
for this is psilocybin mushrooms.
Bob Marley, Emma Goldman, Ghandi, Lucy Parsons, Martin Luther King,
Cesar Chavez, to name a few. When you adorn your person with the
image of Guevara it says RETARD in big capital letters. Go ahead
and have a fit, just as long as you grow a brain when you're
finnished.
|3.5.07 @ 11:46AM|#
Ed: Right you are. As you will see from my column "I don't care where my food comes from and neither should you," I regard the likes of Schlosser and Michael Pollan as complete poseurs.
|3.5.07 @ 11:50AM|#
It is not cloning that is going to make the
impact,
I think the idea is to clone animals with particularly desirable
traits. Beef with a certain kind of marbling, or a cow that is
especially fertile. Conventional reproductions a crap shoot. Just
ask those guys trying to make racehorses. Oh, and like every single
technology that came before it, cloning will be cheap and easy once
the tech matures.
|3.5.07 @ 11:57AM|#
Tros: I'm sorry, the quote you quoted is in many places quite
sensible, but I make it a policy not to listen to people who can't
spell Gandhi.
It bespeaks intellectual laziness--if you haven't read anything
about him, you have no business mentioning him for good or ill, and
if you have read about him you have no excuse for misspelling his
name.
|3.5.07 @ 11:57AM|#
64% of Americans were uncomfortable with animal
cloning
I find this figure hard to believe. Cloning seems like an easy sell
to me.
GM foods on the other hand, that is a tougher sell.
I wonder if the people answering the survey are mixing the two in
thier answer.
The Wine Commonsewer|3.5.07 @ 12:05PM|#
,,,are uncomfortable with farming, which is why most of us
get fat at a nice desk job and keep our hands clean....
That's right, I prefer to do my hunting at the local groceria. Not
interested in shooting game, cleaning, disposing of the entrails,
laundering the blood soaked garments, or none of the rest of it. I
want a steak in a cellophane package.
The Wine Commonsewer|3.5.07 @ 12:16PM|#
Come on jb, it's a just spelling error. :-)
If the comment was good, then it doesn't matter all that much
because we all knew who tros meant when he misspelled Ghandi.
Some people just can't spell, some people are careless, some people
are really good at spelling, some people don't know what spell
check is, and some people have that annoying spell checker that
comes with Firefox. The one that thinks Ghandi should be spelled:
Mohandis or Handicap or Handiwork. It doesn't know how to spell
anything either.
Personally, I take more issue with his frequent use of the word
RETARD than with him misspelling Ghandi. I know people who are
actual retards. None of them are Marxist and none of them own a
Che Tee Shirt.
LarryA|3.5.07 @ 12:20PM|#
64% of Americans were uncomfortable with animal
cloning
64% of Americans are uncomfortable with anything their parents
didn't do.
I wonder how many people realize that almost all the fruit we eat
is produced by cloning, and has been for decades.
But of course there are no interest groups that would benefit
from cloned meat being approved for sale.
And the biggest group would be people who eat meat. Consistently
better quality, and eventually lower price for the same quality,
are features, not problems.
It is not cloning that is going to make the impact, it is
growing meat, and especially fish, artificially in
laboratories.
Provided (as several SF stories predict) we don't stumble on the
laboratory equivalent to long pig.
LarryA|3.5.07 @ 12:25PM|#
Oh, and: Bob Marley, Emma Goldman, Ghandi, Lucy Parsons,
Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, to name a few.
What we really need is a T-shirt with a photo of Norman
Borlaug.
|3.5.07 @ 12:26PM|#
LarryA,
"But my special interest are the good guys, who will do good
things" does make them any less of a special interest.
|3.5.07 @ 12:28PM|#
Interesting that Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of
Fear, is not afraid.
Wait, no, it's not interesting. The guy who warned us about
baseless fear-mongering shouldn't be afraid.
Never mind. Delete my comment.
Dan T.|3.5.07 @ 12:29PM|#
And the biggest group would be people who eat meat.
Consistently better quality, and eventually lower price for the
same quality, are features, not problems.
That's begging the question. The objection to Frankenfoods are that
they may not turn out to be safe.
Hopefully, they will. But you don't have to be a luddite to
exercise caution.
|3.5.07 @ 12:30PM|#
I'm with Cab. It's the exact same cow...where is the threat? For that matter...where is the benefit? Like so much else in genetics, it seems to be a solution in search of a problem.
|3.5.07 @ 12:36PM|#
Don't you people understand, cloned beef will inevitably lead to a world in which the genetically engineered Aryan super beef will rule the other benighted cows. A future where the divide in cow society becomes ingrained into their very DNA.
Andrew|3.5.07 @ 12:45PM|#
James, much of the tree-based fruit industry uses cuttings from
certain superior plants to ensure a uniformity and superiority of
product. These are often the most productive plants, so it makes
sense for the farmer to breed them... but even more sense for the
farmer to just make cuttings and propagate clonally.
A similar thing could be done with meat, making sure that we as
consumers usually get the same high grade of beef or uniform
(large) size certain choice cuts. Of course, it would be subject to
the same problem that all clonally produced populations have,
namely disease: if something affects one individual, it'll likely
affect all of its genetically identical clones as well.
|3.5.07 @ 1:03PM|#
No, VM, the proper term is "moo."
Dumbing down our bovine education system with Moose-bonics is a
sign of cultural decline.
|3.5.07 @ 1:10PM|#
64% of people may be uncomfortable with cloned meat, but I
suspect even more people are uncomfortable with killing their own
meat. Nobody wants to make the connection between awesome venison
stew and Bambi, or beef wellington and those lovable moo-moos one
sees while driving along the interstate.
In fact, some
people are even offended that children would be subjected to the
horrible sight of how meat makes into neat little cellophane
packages.
So what if people are uncomfortable with cloned meat? People are
uncomfortable with death. Why else would we call it beef, venison,
pork, ham, etc. We can't even call our burger meat "cow." I'm am
not surprised to hear that people are uncomfortable with a new way
to get that cute moo-moo into the cellophane package and ultimately
my belly.
VM|3.5.07 @ 1:22PM|#
LOL
:)
Moose-bonics is a perfectly acceptable form of
Cow-munication.
"What A" Guy Dienstag blogs about it!
Grotius|3.5.07 @ 1:22PM|#
So, if they clone geese with extra-fatty livers will I eat the
foie gras made out of it? I'll certainly give it a try! Indeed,
I'll give it several tries. ;)
If they can clone abalone that would be awesome too.
T|3.5.07 @ 1:23PM|#
Lamar,
You nailed it. My wife will gladly eat all kinds of meat, but does
NOT like to be reminded that it originally came from an animal. Pig
and cow jokes about the main course have been summarily banished
from the dinner table. In her worldview, meat magically appears at
the butcher shop with no precedent creature involved. Vat-grown
beef would actually improve things from her perspective.
Me, I don't get it. Generally speaking, something died for your
meal. 'Tis the way of the world.
|3.5.07 @ 1:26PM|#
Here's my beef with cloned beef: it turns a single instance of a
natural animal into some human's (or rather, human corporation's)
intellectual property. I think the testing and license fees that
have grown up in plant crops around second generation GM fields is
by far the most lousy recent development in agribusiness. I do not
look forward to the day when some beefy Pioneer HiBred is able to
code in or breed for sterilization along with the marbling genes,
and turn the screws onto producers for repeat business. (it would
be far better for the clone producer to take on the entire business
risk (and run production from head to tail) rather than generate a
captive revenue stream based on a specific original instance of a
cow)
I think the case of Diamnond v. Chakrabarty should have been
outside the scope of human law, in much the same way I feel the
continued existence of, for instance, cannabis and poppy plants
should be outside the scope of human law. Living things, natural
plants and animals, should interact with human society in the event
of their individual existence, and not with any overriding
ownership or control of the entire class.
VM|3.5.07 @ 1:34PM|#
"Generally speaking, something died for your meal."
and the cuter it is, the tastier the meal!
(think: SNL at the Monkey restaurant where Dennis Miller says,
"I'll take the little one that's clinging to the big one")
|3.5.07 @ 1:54PM|#
I feel like I've eaten this steak many times before. It's deja moo all over again!
|3.5.07 @ 2:07PM|#
it turns a single instance of a natural animal into some
human's (or rather, human corporation's) intellectual
property.
Umm, every instance of a "natural [domesticated] animal" is
someone's property already. Not sure what the beef is here.
ed|3.5.07 @ 2:21PM|#
Just for yucks: Ed's take on lamb, and PETA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsj2LmBCpuQ
Timothy|3.5.07 @ 2:30PM|#
Why else would we call it beef, venison, pork, ham,
etc.
Well, with beef specifically it's a word borrowing from French.
"Boeuf" is French for "cow" and after the Norman Invasion the word
ended up in English because it sounds fancy, from Old French the
spelling is boef. Most of the others are the same, pork
coming from the Latin word for pork &c.
Incidentally, there's an awesome online etymology dictionary.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php
|3.5.07 @ 2:54PM|#
R C:
I agree - an individual domestic animal is a specific human's
property. I object to an entire theoretical class of organisms
being specfic property.
If an agribusiness, either through breeding or GM (it doesn't
matter, really) developed a super-marbled tasty cow, or cow which
reaches slaughter weight weeks less than normal, or other quality
trait, great. If they then use cloning to be able to produce
thousands of shots of sperm for artificial insemination, or cloned
zygotes to be sold to farmers for implantation, great.
Everything's fine to this point. If a farmer grows the child of the
artificial insemenation or the purchased zygote to adulthood, and
then breeds the result with regular cattle, I don't believe the
original breeder should have any financial interest or ownership in
the result.
It's currently not the case with plants. Plant farmers who use GM
crops or even have GM genome show up in their neighboring
cropfields owe a royalty to the IP holder. (Monsanto Canada Inc. v.
Schmeiser). Beyond the willingness of parties to observe it, I
can't comprehend the legal theories that would enforce a contract
with this provision. I just can't see this as piracy in the
slightest.
I assert the following: all living things exist to distribute their
genomes, that this is the meaning of life. More colloquially, a
genome is the ultimate open-source software. GM companies can make
fine profits selling services in support of their innovations in
the genome; I reject strenuously to the idea that a
self-replicating code (with inherent self-modifying procedures)
carries forward any intellectial property ownership beyond the
physical product of the first iteration.
It should be incumbent on any GM company that feels otherwise to
own the security of their code, and not assert that released
derivative products of their research were somehow stolen through
human agency.
|3.5.07 @ 3:11PM|#
Timothy: I use that site all the time. It's great. But it doesn't change my point. Why are people using foreign words when referring to food, but vernacular when referring to animals? And why is it fancy? Please don't say "because it's French" because the masses didn't know French.
|3.5.07 @ 3:15PM|#
TWC:
Yes, it's just a spelling error, but it's not a typo. A typo is
when your finger slips--in this case, people's brains are putting
the h in the wrong place.
I still don't respect anyone who has read about the man enough to
understand him and still won't spell his name right. I respect even
less those who misspell his name because the only things they've
read about him are written by the first group.
Timothy|3.5.07 @ 3:36PM|#
Lamar: At this point because it's a part of the language of
modern English. At the time, it was probably borrowed because the
upper-class spoke French and the peasantry picked up on it.
I'm not saying you don't have a point about people dealing with
death poorly, you do, but I think the language of meats has a lot
more to do with English's history as the bastard child of basically
every other European language than it does with anything death
specific. Not that I'm a linguist or anything, but I think at this
point it's been in the language for a few hundred years so that's
likely the reason.
|3.5.07 @ 4:09PM|#
Plant farmers who use GM crops or even have GM genome show
up in their neighboring cropfields owe a royalty to the IP holder.
(Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser).
Not the Monsanto Canada case again. That was pretty clearly a case
of theft - its not like you can get concentrations of a specific
strain in your field like the farmer did without planting it.
And what's wrong with a farmer deciding, of his own free will, to
enter into a contract with a seed company that places certain
restrictions on what he does with the seed and its resulting
plants?
|3.5.07 @ 4:15PM|#
Timothy: I specifically disagree that the peasants used the
Norman words because the aristrocracy used those terms. They were
neither educated enough to speak French, nor does it appear that
they ever did. If the poor ate cow, they ate cow, not beef.
Also, there is the same distinction in other languages that were
not a part of the Norman invasion. In Spanish, a cow is "vaca" but
when you eat the cow it is "rez." A chicken is a gallina, but pollo
is the food.
I really don't know if it is because we don't want to animate that
which we are going to eat, but I'm pretty sure the Norman
aristocracy has nothing to do with it. OK, way too much research on
this.
jeb|3.5.07 @ 4:49PM|#
Lamar, As to commoners using the Norman French word for things: The book Quicksilver (which is fiction but not historically inaccurate I think ) points out that the guy who shoes horses is called a ferrier, from the French word for the same. The 17th century English character then realizes that, since the French word for horseshoe is fer, the French must have had an inordinate influence on his language somehow. This angers the character so he brains a young ferrier with a branding iron and an educational time is had by all.
|3.5.07 @ 5:09PM|#
Yes, entertaining books, NOT historically accurate, but for historical fiction, pretty good. I'm sure many latin words and french words seeped into the vernacular by the mid-1600s, 600 years after the Norman invastion. I didn't mean to suggest that there was an eternal firewall between French and English.
|3.5.07 @ 6:50PM|#
Lamar,
"People are uncomfortable with death. Why else would we call it
beef, venison, pork, ham, etc."
Actually, there's an answer to that. When the French-speaking
Normans took over English-speaking England, the ordered their food
in French. Their English servants were told to cook a boeuf, and
went out and killed a cow, then called it "boeuf" when serving
their French masters.
Eventually, the French word became the name for the dish, while the
English word remained the word for the animal in came from.
|3.5.07 @ 6:52PM|#
Lamar,
As usual, the libertarians left economic class out of their
analysis, and left you with an incomplete picture.
;-)
The Wine Commonsewer|3.5.07 @ 11:21PM|#
I still don't respect anyone who has read about the man
enough to understand him and still won't spell his name right. I
respect even less those who misspell his name because the only
things they've read about him are written by the first
group.
Fair enough.
The Wine Commonsewer|3.5.07 @ 11:22PM|#
but in France one egg is un oeuf.
That's very good, but NoStar still wins with
Deja Moo.
|3.6.07 @ 10:09AM|#
Antarctic Penguin comes from behind to steal the thread from NoStar. What a stunning upset!
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