Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

ok , if no, then why not? I fthe animal goes through the same growth cycle and eats the same things that other cows do, whats the big deal?

Having two questions with opposing answers in the same talk item is confusing - "Would you eat the meat or drink the milk...?" vs "Do we care?"

I personally would not care. I'd rather see the world hunger problems solved than people having moral objections to eating that particular farm animal because it was raised differently.

If you're against cloning, you should be against grafting as well.

As far as I'm concerned, world hunger and cloning are related to one another only insofar as they both have to do ultimately with agibusiness. I would rather that the geo-economic problems that contribute to hunger in the developing world were resolved in an humane way, and in a more sensible way, given that the United States routinely interferes with trade agreements between developing countries (and that includes food) to promote its own interests. When (if) that happens, those of use who are lucky enough to be able to choose where our food comes from will have a difficult decision to make. For me, I would rather support regional agriculture than buy - and eat - products that were produced in a laboratory thousands of miles away.

I absolutely do not care, and shame on Land O' Lakes for joining in the anti-science demagoguery. There is no rational basis which has -- or can be -- stated by anybody against cloned foods. No scientific evidence whatsoever exists to prove or suggest that such food would be harmful, and the speculative musings of Luddites should not be confused with scientific proof. Such anti-cloning, sentiments are based not upon intellectual examination, but upon subjective aesthetic preferences. People are of course entitled to whatever aesthetic preferences they have, but neither anti-cloning, vegetarianism, or any other subjective aesthetic preference should be imposed on the public at large, particularly as these preferences will have the necessary affect of increasing human suffering and starvation.

Cloning stands to revolutionize food production by greatly increasing the quantity of agricultural products. This is a serious threat to the established agro-industrial order, which Land O' Lakes and their ilk are looking to protect. I have no interest in allowing Land O' Lakes and the dairy interests to keep the price of dairy products artificially high, with the massive barriers they have created to insulate themselves from compeitition (do you realize that there are goverment imposed floors on milk prices in the United States to protect these interests?). Land O' Lakes move is just a cynical attempt to keep the present dairy oligopoly intact.

IMHO, it's just one scientific step above selctive breeding. People have been eating fruit and vegetables (and smoking things) that were cloned for a long, long time. The purpose of cloning is to produce individuals that produce more and/or better products. With plants, it's size, flavor, disease resistance or appearance and/or scent, in ornamental horticulture.

With animals the point is to have cows that produce more milk, or beef cattle that bulk up faster and provide more, higher quality meat.

The only thing that concerns me with cloning is biodiversity. It will surely look weird when driving by a herd of Holsteins and all of them have the same spot pattern. Luckily, there are people who are committed to breed rare subspecies like red wattled pigs.

Shouldn't we be asking Why we need to clone things in the first place? Not enough food naturally here for the amount of people? Then that means the population has exceeded it's supply. Stop reproducing wildly and we'll have more than enough, duh. Don't go against nature by making excess (population) appear acceptable.

Also, Americans have no memory of the value of the spiritual connection that eating foods from nature provides. Foods grown by people who love what they are doing and do it conciously DO give you a greater intelligence and more expanded conciousness. We've nearly forgotten this. Eating factory-farmed foods has given the masses a factory, cog-in-the-wheel mentality. That's why you no longer 'care' when someone offers you up a lab experiment as 'food'. Sad, sad, sad. It's also why we have someone who's running our country and it's people into the ground. He grew up on factory food too. Observe the result. Go Organic, NON-GMO, shop from local small farmers who have a passion for what they produce and try to remember, or learn, the true reason why organic and natural are vital to your success as a spiritually connected, wise-thinking, healthy human being.