NEWS: Would you like that medium, rare, or cloned?

CULTURE: Would you like that medium, rare, or cloned?

Over the past decade, meat-eaters have had to face issues ranging from hormones and antibiotics to E. coli and mad cow disease. Now a new concern is about to land smack-dab in the middle of their dinner plates, right between their mashed potatoes and peas. The FDA--that bastion of consumer safety, always striving to honor science over politics--is poised to begin allowing meat producers to use cloning to breed "genetically superior" cows, pigs and goats for food. Yum, yum! Specials tonight include Hello, Dolly lamb chops with a side of Monsanto Creamed Corn.

If the idea of eating a cloned animal makes you lose your appetite, no worries: You'll just check the label to make sure that your ground chuck is "traditional," right? Wrong.

Oh! Well, if the FDA says so, it must be true! What a relief. I'm starving, pass the...wait, what? You want to know whether you're eating the original or the carbon copy? Gosh, picky, picky. Well, chances are that neither cloned animals nor their offspring will be marketed as organic, so there's that.

So at least you can head over to your local natural food store for some organic animal protein. And while the frankenfood may not be labeled, a registry of cloned animals will be kept to track them as they move into the food processing chain.

Bon appetite!

cue the vegetarian/vegan response...

OUTRAGE!!!!

"Frankenfood". I love it when the pitchfork-wielding mob of Transylvanian villagers invokes the image of Frankenstein.

Cloned with a side of fries. Hold the cole slaw please.

That is some freakish stuff. Straight out of some sci-fi novel. Cloned steak served with some GMO corn, you really don't have to imagine anymore...

Like I said the first time this article was written, OH NO, SCIENCE IS SCARY!

And I totally don't remember this, but apparently it was me who first posted this story.

As a vegetarian, I'm down with it. It's one step closer to being able to grow meat without actually killing a conscious animal.

Whats wrong with cloned meat? As long as it doesn't cause disease or turn you into a mutant, I don't see a problem. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing this taken further to the vat grown meat stage. Then meat eaters could chow down all they want and not have to kill a single cow, pig, chicken or whatever other animal they feel like eating.

The whole Frankenfood thing pisses me off. It's one thing to say "I only eat organic" or "No genetically modified food in our stores!" When you're sitting at your computer in a well developed western country, with a grocery store or a convenience store or a bevy of restaurants within reach. Go to one of those countries where people are starving because food won't grow in the arid or polluted soil and tell them that it is gross or immoral to genetically alter corn or wheat so that it will grow in their wasteland of a country. As long as modified food products are clearly and truthfully labeled and separate from un-altered food, what the hell is the problem?

As long as it tastes good and doesn't give me cancer I don't really give a shit.

Or at least gives me an equal or lesser amount of cancer than the meat I'm already eating. Less would ve nice.

The Vegans are way ahead on this one. Been eatin' altered and cloned tofu for years.

P.S.
Uh oh, they didn't tell the vegans at all?

Meh. Eat whatever the hell you want. Just make sure it's ethically responsible.

I've never really been worried about the health risks of cloned or GM foods but the fact of the matter if that any idiot whose taken a agriculture class knows that it's better to have a diverse crop than a superior crop. when an entire herd of cloned steers drops dead in Argentina from some unknown virus the small farms will hopefully reap the benefits of having a smaller but stronger sampling to choose from.

Not to mention issues of cross pollination and invasive growth in GM crops. I'm also willing to bet that raising a flock of cloned sheep is not the same as raising a flock of uncloned sheep.

the idea of growing meat is a bit freaky to me...are we on our way to test tube tube steaks?

Is there any scientific evidence that cloned meat or dairy would be unsafe or is this just typical unfounded hysteria?

Pretty sure it's typical unfounded hysteria.

Hey, these are uncharted biotech waters we're talking about here. Give the brand-new unfounded hysteria its due.

I wish they could clone meat without the nervous system of an animal. Maybe stimulate muscle tone with electrodes or something. Then we'd be getting somewhere.

Without nerve tissue to cause the musculature to contract in response to the electrodes' outputs, those same electrodes aren't really going to be effective.

Maybe something to replace the nerve tissue's function, but if someone can come up with a replacement for that, they'll probably have a few more important things to do with it than hooking it up to cloned cow flanks.

i don't have a problem with this. but, would this make meat prices go up or down?

Good point. And really you need blood vessels and a heart to pump the blood. I just don't want it to have a brain. It could just be a big delicious filet on life support. Yum.

What's more important than that?

I don't give a shit, honestly.

In fact, I hope it's cheaper. Pile that cloned beef on higher! Hell, throw in some cloned Coffee and Cloned chocolate while you're at it.

Cloning may cause alot of weird shit, but I haven't yet stumbled across anything saying how it would be bad for you in and of itself.

If they can grow it in pre formed tubes, then all the power to them. It won't destroy as much farm land. However it may allow for further growth of the human population. Which pretty much fucks the earth over any way you shape it.

Myomer-based synapse-linked battlemech exoskeletons.

That has trouble written all over it.

people freak out over genetically modified or cloned food, without realizing what it really means when they eat it. Absolutely nothing. Its not like its been doused in chemicals. for some reason, people seem to think that if science has touched it, its dangerous and causes cancer.