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Cloned Beef Coming Soon?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the identical-steaks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at Popular Science cloned beef may be coming soon. It talks about using meat within 48 hours of slaughter to allow cloning the best possible specimens, something that is not possible to determine while the animal is still alive. Apparently only 1 in 8000 animals is truly the best. Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal. That would end all the ethical issues with raising an animal for food, potential issues from mad cow disease, bird flu and whatever the next media induced panic is."

4 of 529 comments (clear)

  1. Just label it. by attemptedgoalie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I want the chance to vote with my dollars.

    I don't think we know enough about the process and long term issues to go nuts with this now. Test it. Test the hell out of it.

    But let me choose whether or not to buy it.

    --
    My mom says I'm cool.
  2. Just you wait.... by Gemini_25_RB · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even if we could "grow" perfect steaks without the rest of the animal, somehow the practice will be banned. Yes, I'm looking at you, animal-rights extremists and religious wackos.

  3. Re:Tofu? by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    They have that its called Tofu....


    I've tasted steak, and I've tasted tofu, and they are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.


    honestly I don't see how you could "grow" meat.


    I honestly don't see how they can pack a billion transistors onto a chip the size of my thumbnail, but somehow they do it anyway... fortunately human progress is not limited by the scope of any one individual's imagination.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  4. FUD by drsquare · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Another issue is that the stuff inside steak that's "tasty", also happens to be bad for you if it's a significant portion of your diet. Saturated fats and high protein diets seem to cause long-term issues.

    Lean steaks are also tasty. The 'dangers' of fat are vastly overrated, the body needs fats to function properly. You'll find that excessive carbohydrates will do you more harm than anything. And a lack of protein is more dangerous than too much. You can eat 200g of protein a day without ill effect, but eat less and you end up losing significant strength.

    I just find that our country's meat-heavy diet is expensive and inefficient. We're depleting our fresh water aquifers at a rapid rate, trying to grow feed for our cattle. American's waists are expanding, in part from our high-calorie meat diet.

    Americans are fat because of too many processed foods filled with starch and sugar. The general health of Americans would be better if they cut out the donuts, cokes cakes, breads etc. and replaced them with more natural foods like steak, chicken and lamb. You only have to look at the sagging arms of most Americans to see they're not eating too much protein!

    Meat is not expensive or inefficient. There is enough land for everyone to have enough meat, no-one in America is starving. People probably eat less meat now than ever, so talk about depleting at rapid rates is sheer scaremongering.