Saturday February 3, 2007, 5:15 pm
One more reason why I will stick to Organic foods! This is scary!!

Saturday February 3, 2007, 6:53 pm
so unbelievable

Monday February 5, 2007, 6:29 am
How can they not give us a choice! It's our right to choose whether we want to eat it or not.. Maybe because they know no one will eat the cloned meat.

Monday February 5, 2007, 9:55 am
Glad I'm a vegetarian!!

Monday February 5, 2007, 10:58 am
No offense, but this isn't news. This is completely unscientific opinion and speculation. There is absolutely no difference between animals born of cloning, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, or natural fertilization. There is absolutely no evidence that meat or milk from cloned animals is unsafe. Being against animal cloning for ethical reasons is fine, but using quasi-science to back the ethical claims is never appropriate.

Cloning could be useful to animal breeders because it preserves the unique combination of genes in an animal. When egg and sperm unite, genes from both parents are reshuffled so the offspring won't ever be exactly like either parent (even if both parents are extremely inbred, there will be some subtle differences in the offspring). Other than having the same gene combination (just like identical twins, but born at different times), cloned animals are not special or different.

There is still some research that needs to be done for the process to be really useful. It isn't yet possible to
"reset" the genome (epigenetic reprogramming), which is why it takes so many attempts to get a successful clone. Once the research is more complete, a lot of benefits could be gained from cloning. The technology will decrease in price as the techniques are perfected.

Meat from cloned animals will be rare in the food supply anyway, simply because it is an expensive process, and will always be more expensive than artificial insemination. More likely, superior bulls will be cloned and their sperm used for fertilization.

Personally, I'd prefer if everyone ate less meat entirely, but cloning could really improve the conditions for animals.

For example, animals that have desirable traits, such as high milk production could be cloned to decrease use of hormones. Animals that have natural disease resistance could be cloned to decrease use of antibiotics.

Another example: we all like the idea of free-range grass fed beef instead of grain fed, but apparently grass fed beef is inferior in taste. Every once in a while, a grass fed cow will produce good quality beef. This cow could be cloned, so that more meat would come from pasture raised cattle instead of fed grain in a feed lot. This is better for the environment and for the cows :)

Monday February 5, 2007, 11:05 am
how about stop using animals for scientific anything and just leave them be?????

Monday February 5, 2007, 4:55 pm
Cloning anything is bad becase you lose the variety in the gene pool. WE have seen that with the crazy disease resistant seeds they have out now. Thank God some people are saving heirloom seeds so whole crops are destroyed by some new disease that the crazy seeds have no way to fight. Seeds and animals won't get disease if they are kept away from chemicals of any kind. I had my most disease free and bug free crop this year because I didn't use a single chemical and the plants could care for themselves with the help of the other plants near them. I want as much variety in the gene pool as possible!

Monday February 5, 2007, 7:38 pm
Go veg!