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FDA Decides Cloned Animals Safe to Eat
friedo writes "After five years of research, the Food and Drug Administration has decided that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat. From the article: 'The government believes meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine. Meat and milk from the offspring of clones is also safe, the agency concluded. Officials said they did not have enough information to decide whether food from sheep clones is safe. If food from clones is indistinguishable, FDA doesn't have the authority to require labels, Sundlof said. Companies trying to distance themselves from cloning must be careful with their wording, he added.'"
which is more funny? I dunno...
I can't wait till they can clone meat without that unnecessary nervous system, what will those vegans say then?
" From the article: 'The government believes meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine. Meat and milk from the offspring of clones is also safe, the agency concluded."
I seem to remember seeing on the news that this wasn't a forgone conclusion within the agency.
Well isn't it kind of obvious? I mean.. if the original is safe to eat and the clone isn't, doesn't that make it not a clone?
:D
I also wonder if there is much of a benefit to cloning meat anyway. I'm by no means an expert on clones but don't they take just as long as the "real thing" to reach maturity? I suppose they could only clone high quality animals for the best hauls of meat.. maybe I answered my own question. Any other ideas would be pretty cool though
I'm more concerned with the animal's diet and lifestyle.
www.themeatrix.com
It's amazing! Cloned meat is just as healthy for you to eat as meat from the adult that had been cloned. Wow.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Would cloned humans taste any better than people do now?
Imagine a single cow that has favorable qualities for cloning - grows faster, has better meat yield.
Imagine that cow also has a hereditary problem that, when eaten, causes health problems in humans.
The cow by itself would affect a very small portion of the population.
Cloned, and undetected, it will affect many many more people.
This scares me a lot.
Deja Moo?
The feeling you've eaten this steak before.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
...is why this is even an issue.
A clone is an identical twin. The cow/sheep/dog/cat is still a cow/sheep/dog/cat, whether twinned or cloned.
The only difference is the method, with some methods being more successful at creating viable embryos than others.
An human grown from an in-vitro fertilized egg is no less human, is he/she?
A twinned human is no less human, is he/she?
A cloned human is no less human, is he/she?
The only stupidity surrounding this stems from bad science-fiction. George Lucas Must Die (hey, that sounds like a good schlock movie title)
If anyone disputes the above, I will have to ask you to step outside.
--
BMO
which is more funny? I dunno...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
From the article: 'The government believes meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.
So, is that the 'every day' beef with the dioxins in it, the tacos with the e. coli, or the mad cow patties?
Meat and poultry will now have no variance at all. Not that it affects me. I've adopted my mom's hippie ways and regularly pay a little extra for organic, local food products.
I don't like the way they used indistinguisable here. I'm not sure, but I was under the impression current clonning technology left us with gimped out calfs.
Isn't it the case that all cloned animal have a shortened life-span? Although genetically the same, I don't think clones are the same developmentally. I think there are some really horrible congenital defects that happen during cloning.
I think this indistinguishable bit might be BS. Also, I would like to have a label stating "cloned meat". Many people refuse to buy knock off Rolexes, even though they can be indistinguishable from the original. It's a matter of principal to some.
I can't say I like all the tampering science does to our food supply. It's too easy for stuff to get approved and too hard for it it get banned after approval (e.g. Sodium Nitrate). But what are arguments against this? The only real problem I see is the whole patent mess.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What 'hereditary health problem that is harmful to humans'. I defy you to name a single hereditary, undetectable health problem in cattle that is the slightest bit dangerous. Wait! Wouldn't a defect that hurts humans also hurt/kill the cow? Because we have very similar biologies?
in a spaceship as a source of meat - a big cancerous lump of it that continuously regrew as a source of food.
..........FULL STOP.
By 2008, you'll have 3 kinds of beef:
1. Certified cloned beef
2. Certified non-cloned beef
3. no-label beef - like a hot dog, you don't know what's in it.
Most people won't care but some people will pay extra to get that mmm-good taste of non-cloned beef and others will pay extra-extra to get that mmm-mmm-good-good taste only cloning provides.
Even if category #1 doesn't show up on supermarket shelves, the "green" beefeaters who fear clones will create a market for category #2.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
whch is mor funny? # dunno..
In the news today, the FDA is poised to approve food from cloned animals. Apparently eating clones makes some people uncomfortable. Their thinking goes like this:
0 06/12/deja_food.html
"I sure enjoy eating Bob the cow, but I wouldn't feel comfortable eating Bob the other cow."
Eating clones got me thinking about the intellectual property of human supermodel DNA. At some point it seems inevitable that billionaires will start cloning supermodels so they can grow their own girlfriends. Someday it will surely be legal in some country.
If you were a supermodel who had snorted away all of your money and you were now too old to model, and some billionaire offered you a hundred million dollars for your DNA, would you sell it? Assume you know in advance that the billionaire is a disgusting pig who will be raising your clone to be a brainwashed sex slave.
Assume also that your clone won't be forced to do anything against her will. She will simply be raised to believe the billionaire is a godlike creature and the rest will happen naturally. No laws will be broken. And she will live like a princess except for the part about being a clone whore to an old, rich fat guy. In other words, the quality of her life will be in the top 10% of the planet if you consider the wretchedness the average human's life around the world.
Would you sell your DNA for $100,000,000?
From the Dilber blog: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2
What I would like to know is what did they test to make sure it was safe. I am disconnected from all this cloning issues so the last I read was that clones had shorter lifespans than the originals. Some claimed it was because the base genetic material that they used might have transmitted it's "age state" to the new egg. Programmed cell suicide and all that. I also read that cloning of higher vertebrates was a really complex matter and with a very low success rate, though I'm not sure that matters because they don't seem to be aiming to produce a Clone Army (tm) of cows, rather than trying to clone the best specimens and have those breed so we can eat their offspring.
Eek, put like that makes me see better those crazy vegetarians' point. Anyway, another doubt that I have is how on earth can they be certain that swine and cow are ok but don't know about sheep? Maybe they simply didn't test them but might there be any other reason? After all, sheep were the first really complex vertebrates to be cloned...
Would somebody with actual knowledge clue me in please?
+Raider of the lost BBS
I'm amazed it took them five years to figure out this one.
Anyone knows how long did it take them to deal with more complex questions, like the safety (or exact composition) of a Twinkie?
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Parton, that is. We could each have one, at any age of 18 or over, of course. Mmmm, big boobies. And, she'd be safe to eat.
There is going to be lots of debate like the GM crops and reading labels is going to be a chore if you have inhibitions.
Live Life!
flooding poor countries with cloned meat thereby further destroying their economy!
In twins the parent DNA lines came from a sperm and egg that when combined goes through a process where the DNA is demethylated and remethylated. This determines the parental imprinting for which version of a particular gene will get expressed: Mom's or dad's.
Nuclear transfer clones don't go through this sexual process and their DNA methylation states are found to be "different." It is speculated that the extra-large offspring from some of this cloning comes from over-expression of parental genes. Methylation is also implicated in embryonic development and cell differentiation. There may be other things in the sexual process that cloning fails to reproduce.
I'm all for cloning food, but clones are not completely the same. There could be important differences.
Whch smor funny? # dunnno..
Rhapsody in Numbers
Text created by Control+V deemed safe to read by MLA.
HELLO WORLD
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I'd appreciate it if someone who was more knowledgable in these matters that I am could comment on the premise: "is a cloned animal actually indistinguishable from its donor?"
For example: On average, do cloned animals live just as long as non-cloned animals? (i.e. same average lifespan, standard deviation, confidence level, etc.) I ask this because I remember reading that some cells can undergo only a finite number of replications and that there were some concerns about telomere and aging that figured into this.
So, are there ANY genetic differences between donor and cloned animals? That we might not have noticed a difference between the donor and the clone does not necessarily mean that there IS NO difference -- only that we HAVE NOT SEEN any difference... yet.
Indeed!
First we had the geniuses who went ahead with the money saving plan "Let's feed sheep's brains to cows!" which resulted in mad cow disease (which, when infected meat is eaten, can cause incurable and fatal neurological disease CJD in humans). Feeding meat to cows was clearly bad and wrong in ways that don't (shouldn't) need explaining to anyone and *blammo*, well what do you know, karma bites.
OT: Interestingly, Wikipedia says that in the US testing kits for BSE are banned (and presumably only conducted by the FDA then), and states "US Sixty-five nations have full or partial restrictions on importing U.S. beef products because of concerns that U.S. testing lacks sufficient rigor. As a result, exports of U.S. beef declined from $3.8 billion in 2003, before the first mad cow was detected in the US, to $1.4 billion in 2005.". Per head of population, CJD incidents in the US seem to be lower than in Europe/UK though, as US cattle seem to be typically fed on soya (which is at least vaguely sensible, it's a plant for starters - though oddities like artificial 'fish' proteins in GM soya give some cause for concern).
If feeding sheep to cows can screw people up through contamination of the food chain, there has surely got to be some grounds for being seriously concerned about the prospect of problems that might come from consuming cloned meat (specifically if it's on a regular basis - e.g. the same clone being eaten by people all over the world every time they go to a McDonald's, one nasty defect and *blammo* (again)).
As with the BSE crisis, if/when something goes wrong, I suspect the people and companies responsible for producing the goods will not even be investigated or in any way penalised (in fact, they will probably get huge subsidies as cattle farmers in the UK did to make up for the subsequent drop in the market, even though it was their own mess and it was public money that was spent cleaning it up).
Not as big a problem as if one of the clones had a cellular mutation that ended up giving it superpowers (telekinesis, invincibility, the ability to make chocolate milk, etc.) but still, I suspect This Will Not End Well.
It could of course be a much more humane way way to produce veal, dairy cows (without having to drag calves away at birth and feed them supplements) and healthily beef cows without resorting to steroids (though I suspect the industry will keep using them), so it seems not to all bad from a consumer perspective. Ultimately, it would be great to be able to produce meat without having to produce real living animals in the first place. Transmetropolitan 'human foot on a stick' anyone? I hear it's toe licking good...
This is precisely the relevance. An excellent example is Hanover Hill Starbuck, possibly the world's most famous Holstein bull. The Centre d'Insemination Artificielle du Quebec (CIAQ) worked with University of Montreal researchers back around 2000 to produce a clone precisely for this purpose. The original had died in the late 90s after siring over 200,000 offspring.
I can't wait until they apply this to the beef industry. It's a bit of a shot in the dark right now over producing tender steaks. Basically we don't know what we have until it is hanging on a hook and then it was castrated as a calf. It will take a few years yet, but with cloning, we can recreate that animal as a bull and finally have tender beef all the time.
I saw this on New Zealand TV news almost a week ago! Have you been sleeping off Christmas dinner since then or what? Yeesh!
If cloning was anywhere near the point of producing a genetically stable animal, this might be a fair ruling. The fact is, cloning introduces measureable defects. Most of those defects will impact the animal's health, rather than the safety of the meat. Some, and there's currently no way to know how many, will produce meat that is hazardous to humans. If geneticists aren't even sure why such defects exist at all, then you cannot ask them to quantify how many would be hazardous. How on earth could they possibly know?
Cloning might well be safe, once more of the variables have been quantified and the techniques refined to the point of being reliable. Once we are at that point, if the science showed that the risks to human health were comparable to the risks from non-cloned animals, the FDA would have a case. As it stands, this is a political decision that has zero credibility and should be reversed. You shouldn't try to run before you can crawl. (Walk? Stand up? We're nowhere close to those points.) The fact that labelling is to not require any mention of cloning is proof of that. If the market cannot overcome the objections of consumers except by lying to them, then the market has no goddamn business selling the time of day, never mind products where safety is critical.
(Personally, I'd prefer looser rules on what can be sold, tied to clearer markings on what is being sold. By play-pretending rigorous standards that really don't exist, and denying the information required to obtain any quantification of that risk, the consumer relies entirely on absolute trust in the divine wisdom of the FDA theocracy. Yes, it is a theocracy - it is driven entirely by faith, not facts from the ground or accountability from those affected. The FDA's methods are dubious - they were recently questioned with regards performing illegal human experiments on Africans - and their underlying principle seems to be one of worshipping themselves as Gods. The entire department should be closed as a hazard to human health.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well I'm pretty glad I'm a vegetarian right about now.
(and I don't drink milk)
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Protein is protein, take your superstitions elsewhere.
I understand the idea of cloning the "ideal" animal but is it really more cost effictive to the standard breeding? This seems pointless as the standard way of producing new life has to be cheaper than repoducing a "super tasty" existing one. Even if there is one that is ideal there can only be one or two reproductions before basic evolution would take over (disease and/or enviromental situations).
The real impetus behind cloning is castration.
The majority of bulls destined to become meat are castrated well before breeding age, which means no offspring. If one of them turns out to be a prize specimen, you're SOL. With cloning, you can take a blood sample from the prize-winning bull and use it for breeding later.
Since castration is also common in race horses and working dogs, they would presumably also benefit.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Are you sure you don't mean "Protein is Protein"? Just remember, you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor. (I wonder if anybody will get that reference).
BTW, I thought this might spawn a funny thread, but I like the serious direction it's taken.
Finally, AFAIK prions are proteins with the same basic chemistry (same exact number of atoms and linkages between atoms) as their healthy counterparts, but folded differently. Thus, "a protein folded properly is a protein folded properly". Maintaining things like that across generations of cloned copies? Do we really want to stake our lives on it? Cloned monoculture meat? Very serious issues. It's one thing when I, as a programmer, crash somebody's box. It's quite another to crash the food supply. I think we should be a lot more cautious with this stuff. We have redundant power supplies in those servers. Where's our redundantn food supply? If somebody's going to experiment with my food, I want a backup.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You can graze animals on ground that is rocky and hilly. You can not operate modern farm equipment there.
The best land usage is that we use the hilly areas for free-range grazing, the nice flat areas for growing plants, and various crummy areas for houses.
Of course, we do: use the nicest farmland for houses, ignore the hilly areas, and use the crummy-yet-flat areas to grow food for feedlot animals. Our usage of the best farmland for houses is probably the biggest environmental error we make; we are bound to this error by economic factors related to the "tragedy of the commons".
If you could grow meat in vats or on racks of some kind, and this process was not in itself destructive, I doubt very few vegans would continue to abstain, unless they hate the taste or fear getting sick from not eating meat for so long, etc.
The point is that it's not meat that's offensive. In fact, it's not about being offensive. It's that meat eating is unnecessarily destructive. If you remove the destructive part, there's nothing more to object to.
Have a vetrinary surgeon remove a steak without killing the animal. See if the steak is any good. Resist the urge to immediately eat the rest of the animal.
There, problem solved, without all the high-tech nonsense.
I defy you to name a single hereditary, undetectable health problem in cattle that is the slightest bit dangerous.
Man, you really have us there, naming the undetectable. I mean, how would we know it's there? I guess the joke is on us.
The reason BSE exists is because some protein is not just protein. A special protein called a prion becomes misfolded, in a way that makes it become infectious, mutating other prions around it, causing cell death and eventually accumulating in sufficient degree to bore small Swiss cheese holes in your brain tissue.
So perhaps "protein is protein" doesn't really do justice to the nuances of the issue.
"Mad cow" disease is a basically a media hoax. How many people in this world have died to mad cow disease? Less the a hundred? You have a better chance of dying in a swimming pool, driving a car, riding a bike, or being struck by lightening. Seriously, you are far more likely to be eaten by a shark then killed by mad cow disease. People's sense of danger has been completely fucked over by mass media. The stuff that you should worry about is ignored, while stupid shit that isn't even worth noticing is treated like a sign of the apocalypses. Get a grip. If safety is what you really are worried about, you should be far more terrified of crossing the street, riding a bike, or taking a swim in a swimming pool, then worries about feeding sheep brains to cows.
As far as cloning goes... you are not going to die eating a cloned animal. It is going to taste delicious and tasty just like all the other cows. It is like eating a twin. "Unnatural"? Eh, maybe. Tender and delicious? Absolutely.
"animal husbandry"?
I really don't want to know...
As I recall, a telomere is a repeating sequence of DNA. Organisms with long telomeres would have a different average chemical content from organisms with short telomeres.
Maybe one or the other is better to eat. (BTW, maybe the clone is better!)
Great point! Prions defintely show that harmless proteins can turn deadly without any mutations in the gene itself. Could be caused by an interaction with proteins from genes other than the one that expresses the prion itself... sort of like the novel interactions you may get by splicing fish genes into soy...
:)
"No, protein is NOT protein." Or maybe, "PrP-C is not PrP-Sc"...
Actually, I was going to post that the original prion/BSE post was a bit manic, but I agree, it has become interesting
I say, if a company (or whatever) wants to clone and sell animals for food, they should just be able to prove that the cloned animal is 100% genetically identical to the original. If such a test can't be done at this time, or such an accuracy rate can't be achieved (assuming it's reasonable; I'm no genetical biologimist) then wait until it is.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
After seeing video of people being killed by each... I'd opt for the shark any day. A quick, painful death would IMHO be far more desirable than a slow wasting.
Though I suppose you're right about the statistics end of it, as individuals we have more to fear from Multiple Sclerosis than CJD. Then again, as a society don't we have an obligation to prevent what deaths we can? Even if they are only a few?
I'm not debating weather or not this sickness is rare, but I do happen to know as a fact that within the next 4 months I will not be at risk of drowning in a pool or being eaten by a shark. However, I think my mom is planning to make hamburgers for dinner tomorrow night.
To your other point about "As far as cloning goes" you said "you are not going to die eating a cloned animal". You say this, but people die eating NORMAL ANIMALS. We rarely build something better than the original, and when we do, it's after years of hit and miss testing. As far as I know no one has died from eating a cloned sheep yet, so unless this is the first time in history we did this perfect (and I will happily admit I am wrong while eating a fake cow), I think this is only the start and nothing can be said with such assurance yet.
:3 rawr.
Congratulations! This is a new one on me! And it's a new level of "What the f@$%?!"
I'll be sure to not see that ever again. And to warn any unwary clickers:
It's some guy getting abused with a male horse.
One can only imagine the excuses offered to the attending E.R. physician.
ed mcmahon: thank you for tuning in to tonight's show. and now without further ado, sllort and sdem
(sllort and sdem walk out on stage)
(audience applauds)
sllort: thank you
sdem: thanks
sllort: well we have a good show tonight don't we sdem
sdem: we most certainly do
sllort: boy i fucking hate italians, don't you sdem
sdem: yes i agree completely
(audience applauds)
sllort: well it was so damn hot today, do you know how hot it was?
audience: how hot was it?
sdem: it was so hot that vladinator sweated enough to fill a pothole the size of lake michigan
(audience roars with laughter)
sllort: well sdem we should introduce our first guest
sdem: yes i agree completely
sllort: ladies and gentleman please welcome dabney coleman
(dabney coleman walks on stage)
(audience applauds)
sllort: welcome to the program dabney
dabney: it is a pleasure to be here
sdem: yes i agree completely
dabney: what?
sllort: dabney you must tell me what you think of trolling slashdot
dabney: well i must say that i approve of it, i think it is a wonderful pastime
(audience applauds)
sdem: god bless you
dabney: in fact one time i sent my agent this script for a movie i was writing, and at the top i said 'if you want a softcopy of this script please go to goatse.cx'
(audience roars with laughter)
(sllort wipes tears of laughter out of his eye)
sllort: so what did he do
dabney: he called me and said, 'that goat sex site is sick, you are a bastard' then he vomited, it was pretty sick, he threw up all over his phone
sdem: yes i agree completely
the rest of this is cut off due to the fact that idiot slashcode won't accept posts that have average line lengths less than 19, mr. malda needs to spend a bit more time on the bible and a bit less time on draconian slashcode bullshit
""Mad cow" disease is a basically a media hoax. "
While not a hoax, it was certainly hyped up by the media - but it was not the media that caused the political storm of other countries using it as an excuse to protect their markets (France in particular IIRC, though they were by no means alone) which lead to a 'collapse' of the export market (and subsequent subsidy handouts, which in the UK are greatly reshaping - for the better I think - the way we manage land).
That was a big part of the story that was hyped up (and was a big deal), as was the poor way in which the government handled the 'crisis' (which was the biggest story of all IIRC). It is true that BSE is much more common in other countries, and even seen as nothing unusual (though always a problem if it is detected in a herd) and it may well have blown over if the government hadn't handled it so oddly, though I think your right to implicate the media as bearing responsibility too.
"How many people in this world have died to mad cow disease? Less the a hundred? You have a better chance of dying in a swimming pool, driving a car, riding a bike, or being struck by lightening."
Oh for sure. Though if they had kept at it for years and we hadn't changed the practice, it could easily have been a much bigger problem further down the line, and it's entirely possible we'd discover other long term issues too (even things we might be passing on, and that might impact over generations, for example).
It seems a slim risk, a bit like a (bad) far fetch sci-fi movie plot, but the BSE/CJD has shown weird ass stuff like that can happen, with globalised food production it could represent a greater and entirely unnecessary risk.
I don't avoid GM foods particularly (personally, I like the big, round juicy fruit sprayed with no-doubt cancer causing pesticides more than the small, knobbly Organic stuff) and I think globalisation is generally a Good Thing (for political and economic reasons), it doesn't seem prudent to get cocky about this sort of thing though.
We've been there before with so many other products (e.g. if you are pregnant be sure to (not) take some Thalidomide to help with the morning sickness and as an anti-inflammatory for your swollen ankles). It just seems crazy to rush headlong and 'assume' it will all be fine and no one will get hurt.
As far as cloning goes... you are not going to die eating a cloned animal.
If you eat one once, I'm sure it's just fine, maybe even safer than eating a random cow you don't know the history of (if the cloning process was of very high quality and all things being equal). That doesn't describe a very likely future scenario though.
If millions of people effectively eat that same cow for decades, and it turns out there is something funny about it's genetic makeup that has a knock on effect for even a small percentage of the population, then a lot of people could find themselves with some serious problems. It might be increase susceptibility to certain cancers, it could make people more prone to Alzheimer's, it could be another neurological condition, we just don't know, but we do know it can, and has happened before. And for what? To save a couple of pence on each hamburger sold (*literally*). Not worth going in for all guns blazing IMO.
I'm not try to be melodramatic about it, but think about how many screwed up two-headed, six-legged or three tailed goats get created for every decent quality clone that goes in front of the camera and even the 'good' clones don't last long - a clone is, in many ways, the age of the original PLUS it's own age (never mind the other problems under the surface due to damaged DNA).
That is, if you were to take a 35 year old human, and clone him, at 15 they'd have medical complaints (including cancers) you'd only expect to see on a 50 year old. Even with a impossibly perfect cloning process, the individual would be lucky to live to be 35 themselv
I don't know what all the fuss is about cloning sheep and cows. Just clone the milk instead and we'll drink that. You don't have to feed cloned milk.
Actually, I was going to post that the original prion/BSE post was a bit manic
:-)
It is a bit, but then I keep thinking about it and it gets *worse*.
I think GM is in principle great, and I don't think that wizzend looking organic food tastes better than super-hyped pesticide food or those odd screwed-with strawberries (the ones that are insanely huge AND taste really sweet). In a blind test I can't tell the difference between an organic potato or a non-organic one (though in a non-blind test it's easy to spot the small organic one with big pits in - that still cost more per lbs - a mile off). My mother disagrees strongly, but then she collects "healing crystals" and likes tarot cards. God damn hippies.
I am still worried about how much in it's infancy this stuff all is though - I'm not personally worried I'm going to get Brain Cancer from eating too many GM Oranges, but on a global scale. It reminds me of mass produced medication was handled in the 50's, when it was a fledgling industry. Though it's not like we have all the answers now, clearly things have improved and we have at least some processes in place which (as hinted at in the summary) we largely don't have for food (GM or cloned), yet.
Alternately, as long as we're tossing around impossible-to-implement solutions, how about one where people just stop churning out children quite so often, and then we wouldn't have problems feeding everyone? If there weren't so many mouths to feed, the relative inefficiency and land requirements of a carnivorous lifestyle wouldn't be nearly as damaging. It's only when you start trying to scale it to billions and billions of people that it becomes a problem.
I'd rather have fewer people eating and living what and where they want, than more people fighting over the scraps.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Of course the US government was always going to approve the products of large agro-business. It's hardly worth reporting. One of the defining characteristics of facist regimes like the United States is the merger of corporate power and the state, and the protection of corporate interests above the interests of the general populous.
I don't personally see any current problems with genetically modified products, providing that patents are not used to prevent farmers from breeding genetically modified animals, or getting and selling seeds from genetically modified plants. Patents on any form of life are clearly an absurdity that can destroy a good sustainable agricultural system very quickly, as the projects of a certain evil US agro-businesses have demonstrated by starving tens of thousands of people in the few poor countries that are run badly enough to accept their 'aid'.
Don't forget your cloned food library card for school today, kiddles...
This whole topic is just disturbing.
I think "hype" is more correct than "crisis," regarding BSE. In short: Total death toll: 170, of which 160 in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_enc ephalopathy#BSE_statistics_by_country
Our usage of the best farmland for houses is probably the biggest environmental error we make
But at least the first thing we do when building the house is call in the bulldozer to scrape all the topsoil off; making it virtually impossible to change our minds, so we've got that going for us.
One of the things I've always liked about Vermont is that (at least before the New Yorkers started moving in) they have been pretty much forced by the geography to do things right. There's a reason it's known for granite, sheep and cows and any real arable land must be devoted to their feed lots. Not to mention the crappy land left over for houses has the best views from the living room window anyway.
The White European can be considered the orginal settlers of Vermont, because even the precolombian Native Americans couldn't find much of any use for it other than as a transient hunting ground. It has always served as a sink for the disaffected. The Allen brothers were not exactly models of fine citizens. The nation (yes, nation) of Vermont was born out of the guerilla warfare of such, Ethan once threatening to declare war on all of mankind.
They even tend to learn from their mistakes ( at least before the New Yorkers started moving in); as per the aftermath of the "White Gold Rush," which, interestingly, I can't find a single reference to on the web. ("White Gold" is early 19th century Vermonter for wool).
Shame that there's really only two ways to make a living there, even to this day:
a)farm rocks
b)rip off New Yorkers
The family homestead perched on the lump of granite which I stand to inheret isn't well situated for ripping off New Yorkers. I might have to retire to the family homestead in Marblehead; where the only way to make a living is:
a)already have more money than God
b)rip off New Yorkers
That's why I live in New York at the moment. I'm practicing ripping off New Yorkers.
KFG
there is of course another interpretation of what happened with mad cow disease. In all likelyhood without the disproportionate media frenzy around it, governments would have drag assed a lot longer in doing something about the risks, until it did actually reach a crisis proportion. So let's not play blame the media too much here.
The problem is diminishing returns. Although some people may say we can never put a price on human life, there comes a point at which the expense that would be needed to save "a few" more lives is not worth it.
For example, if all cars were limited to 25kph maximum speed, it would undoubtedly reduce the number of deaths on the road, but we still don't do it because the cost would be too high.
Biotech is Godzilla
by Sepultura
from the awesome Chaos AD album
Rio Summit, '92
Street people kidnapped
Hid from view
"To save the earth"
Our rulers met
Some had other
Secret plans
No... No... No... No...
Biotech
Biotech
Biotech
Say what?
Strip-mine the Amazon
Of cells of life itself
Gold rush for genes is on
Natives get nothing
Biotech
Biotech
Biotech
Is Godzilla
Mutations cooked in labs
Money-mad experiments
New food + medicine?
New germs + accidents!
Like Cubatao
"World's most polluted town"
Air melts your face
Deformed children all around
Bio-technology
Ain't what's so bad
Like all technology
It's in the wrong hands
Cut-throat corporations
Don't give a damn
When lots of people die
From what they've made
Biotech
Biotech
Biotech
Is A.I.D.S.?
Stop!!!
We already are using prisoners to feed our people. Pigs are kept in pig-sized boxes. Cattle get fed iron-poor diets to make their meat tender and are kept with their faces tied right up against a fence so they can't turn around. They're so weak, they get dragged wherever they need to go, mostly to slaughter. Chickens get their beaks cut off so they don't peck each other and themselves to death because they're strapped down in chicken-sized boxes.
We tried putting human DNA into pigs so they'd be leaner, but it produced genetic abnormalities we couldn't work around. We've tried feeding animals to animals, but it caused mad cow disease. All of the current practices are still pretty disgusting. We feed the cows rBGH, which causes them to have infections in their udders, causing there to be mucous and pus in our lovely pasteurized, homogenized milk. That's not to mention all the other disgusting things they pump into our animals to keep them alive. Even organic "free-range" cattle are allowed to be kept in a cage during "production" periods of their life, or anytime they're producing milk.
Meat is somehow less and less appealing to me, and I think that on top of the ethical problem we have of breeding living beings that only see the light of the sun on the way to slaughter is really inhuman. Imagine a life inside a box, malnourished, with no human contact. Imagine doing this to someone. It's freaking wrong. To me, the invasion of these animal's genetics is yet a deeper invasion on the wretched masses.
Plus, from an environmental standpoint, each step in the food chain only retains something like 50% (I can't remember the actual number) of the sun's energy from the previous step. Consuming less meat is good for the environment, since the more steps you remove yourself from the actual energy absorption, the more inefficient you get.
But that's just my $0.74
Please stop stalking me, bro.
No body has died because it can take up to, and some times longer than 10 years for CJD to manefest itself into humans; a person can go through life, then *bam* all the symptoms come at once.
"Yes, what were those immigrants thinking? They should be in college instead of dallying about the meat processing plants! Why, they're to blame for the suffering of the animals we eat. The dumb brutes have an electric cattle prod and they know how to use it."
I know what *I'm* thinking. Well I'm thinking you are maybe a racist. Or, in your defence, that people where you are who do that kind of work are most immigrant workers or minorities - which is a fair enough assumption but is not so true here IME (though that has started to change in the last couple of years due to new legislation).
I've know well three people who worked in processing plants (beef,chicken and fish) none of them immigrants (or minorities) or from anything like poor families. All - every one of them - had more formal education than I have had, and I know two of them were from wealthier families (not sure about the other). They all hated it (we've talked about it) but hey they are all grown men, they are the ones responsible for their own lives and their own choices.
Those who have had equal or better chances can't still at 30 (or older, in at least one of the above cases) can't credibly continue to blame 'society' for their bad life choices (and believe me, people with no good reason seem to do that endlessly - one of the aforementioned is a good for nothing relative of mine and it's his mantra). At some point it's only fair to expect grown adults to take responsibility for themselves.
You can think it's an "incredibly arrogant, ignorant statement" if you like, I left school before my 16th birthday, started work, got my own place at 17 (later, my first mortgage at 19), always paid my own way and never claimed a day of social security, I've just worked my ass off and by and large worked a fair bit harder than my contemporaries . Damn right I'm arrogant in that regard. If you want a better job, put the hours in till you're good enough and then go looking for it. What's standing in your way?
Incidentally, I think that's an outlook that most economic migrating (who are of course genuinely at a disadvantage, or they wouldn't be migrating) historically have the least difficulty with - they are already the one's who've been willing to up sticks and move to another country to find better work. Which is not something that most us will (thankfully) ever feel we have to go through.
Judging from your description, it's "Mr. Hands". If that's new to you, lurk moar.
Ooh I have that one, I want a new one one. Nothing new in aages :-(
Actually brought that up in the office once while demoing Front Row once, fortunately I work in an office full of deviants used to much worse.
Wouldn't a defect that hurts humans also hurt/kill the cow? Because we have very similar biologies?
Dude, don't post when you're drunk. Makes you look really, really, REALLY fucking stupid.
Imagine a life inside a box, malnourished, with no human contact.
In other words, the typical Slashdotter's daily routine.
W d?
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
"This burger tastes familiar and I could swear I've eaten this cheese before!"
When we go to a burger place we expect the same product regardless of the season or geography. I can foresee a world where every burger is exactly the same at every location in the chain because every bun and every tomato and every slice of cheese and every hamburger patty come from the the same organic models.
2060 - Welcome to Happy Cow, would you like a Bessy burger?
* Bessy burgers are all made from clones of the original Bessy, a cow found to be especially flavorful who was created specifically to desire to want to become a hamburger.
2090 - Welcome to Happy Cow, would you like a Rodney burger?
* Rodney burgers are all made from clones of the original Rodney, a steer found to be palatable, but not exceptionally so, but hey, its fun to eat a cow that was created specifically to annoy you enough that you wouldn't mind eating it.
3010 - Good afternoon Mr. Stevens, your Happy Cow today is Bessy because you are feeling particularly community minded as are 39% of the Mr. Stevens (Mark XIV) models. Fido (mark XII) is taking himself for a walk and Mrs. Stevens (Mark II) will be joining you shortly but she has been shopping and will be dining on a Rodney steak, rare. I suggest you avert your eyes.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
While what you say is true, it veers away from the fact that at present you can tell if your food has been genetically engineered or raised on a chemical soup. Under the proposed system you would have no choice. Ok, maybe the clones offspring are organically raised and even tucked into bed at night, but they were initially produced from a non-natural source. Surely that's just as relevant as what they were fed on ? Just because it makes the farmer richer is no reason to abandon relevant disclosure.
Firstly, my opposition is to the no labeling part. Surely a label stating "Produced from cloned parents" or "Genetically Engineered Produce" gives the consumer a choice in the decision of which produce to buy ? It shouldn't matter whether the meat is any less (or more) fit for consumption than "normal". To unilaterally decree that it isn't necessary is just totalitarian nonsense.
The problem:
If you produce a clone of a particularly desirable bull, then use that bull to produce generations of cattle for food, there would be no cause to label the food cattle as clones, because they wouldn't be. They would be results of "normal" matings. But that doesn't mean that they don't have the same traits in their DNA as the original clone. How far back in the family tree would you have to go to determine whether an animal was a clone ?
Also, it seems a little far fetched that just the bull would be cloned for desirable DNA. After all, mating with a regular cow would introduce fresh DNA into the offspring, which might offset the benefits of the cloned bull. So, you would really try to find the ideal combination of best bull and best cow, and clone both, then mate both continually for the subsequent offspring.
Of course, none of those offspring would need to be labeled "clone" either as they were the result of natural matings.
Secondly, if you allow me the premise above (both sexes cloned), I fail to see how the constant reproduction of a stagnant gene pool would be beneficial to anyone, either to us as food, or to the long term survival prospects of cattle in general. I see this as similar to cutting down the Amazon rain forest before we know what valuable resources we are destroying. What happens years down the road, when the type of bull and cow we have fostered as the only profitable type, become less suitable for the conditions in which we find ourselves (global warming / different available feedstuff) ? Are we going to set up a global DNA store of all available DNA variations, just in case we need them later ?
So, just to reiterate, how can the possible long term effects of a process, which are eminently unknowable, be ignored in favour of a policy of deliberate concealment from the people who will be the ones to suffer those consequences ?
By forcing the labelling of clone sourced meat, we allow the freedom to choose. Even if 90% of the population "choose" to buy the cloned produce, there will exist a market for the "all natural" product. Without labelling, there can be no differentiation, so no market. While that market exists, so too does the natural variability in the cattles DNA strains.
And that is a Good Thing ®
This is good news for canibals.
So, you don't walk across the street every day? Your bias is showing.
... tomorrow night."
"I'm not debating
And, you will be navigating the streets to get there. Still biased.
"You say this, but people die eating NORMAL ANIMALS. "
Bullshit. Unless you're talking about puffer fish or the like, bullshit. Name a few. Bias still in effect.
That's how the industry will react..... Non-cloned meat will cost more than cloned....
The worldwide demand for beef and dairy products will rise by something like 60% in the next few decades. Cloning is a way to meet this demand by increasing the output per head of cattle.
Because it's a chicken and not a human.
...the extra chicken leg!
Some settling may occur during posting.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
Reading all this makes me SOO happy I am vegetarian. And I`m going to eat a lot more organic/ecologic/biodynamic food. It tastes better and do the body better.
The rest of you are setting yourselves up for a big mess, but what can we say. You`re ridiculing what you don`t understand and using technology just because you can, like a little child with a big gun.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
food coloring, flavoring, and preservatives. If you see things like FD&C-anything, BHA, BHT, TBHQ, etc. in the ingredients list, it's derived from petroleum. Suffice it to say that it's bad for your neurology, but how bad depends on your genetics. See Feingold Association for details.
/.'ers will hastily print banners saying "I for one welcome our bovine overlords"...
And then there's sulfite preservatives, which aren't synthetic but certainly overused...
All cloning does is decrease genetic diversity and lead to bovine versions of the Clone Wars. One day, when the right code is transmitted to their RFID tags, the cows will turn on their protectors and
People die from all kinds of food alergins (sp?), choking, contaminations, eating too much of certain types of meat (why is my toe blue?), etc.
/shrug
I kind of wonder what the impact will be on a very low level, long term, of digesting *identical* protiens and fats etc...I have no clue what I'm talking about, but forget the cloning aspect, and pretend you had 2 billion identical twin cows naturally....would eating just their meat cause issues with digestion or perhaps a lack of variety in cow meat would reduce the variety of types of nutrients, protiens etc? I mean each steak could be healthy, and fine to eat...but what about over and over? Are there nutritional issues here too?
I just don't see how this can be cost effective for larger animals... Maybe smaller, simpler animals that are more cost expensive to raise/catch... like shellfish... I think for things like shrimp, clams, crab and lobster it may actually be commercially cost effective, given how expensive they are to gather/catch... I also think that simpler blank protein bases may be more viable commercially...
Not sure how I would feel about eating such things... Or for that matter, as you mention, eating things that ate said things.. but then again, look what chickens eat, and how much of that we consume.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The risk the parent is actually talking about is not from eating "clones" but rather a diet consisting of monoclones. This may or may not happen with meat products (I'd bet not) but has been the norm for a long time with agricultural products. Unless you going out of your way to buy non corporate produced vegetarian food you have been beta testing this potential problem for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is appreciated.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Yes, in principle, it may be just barely possible that cloning could result in a mutation that causes overproduction of a protein with no noticeable ill effects in the animal, yet survives proteolytic conditions in the stomach and digestive tract, and results in a rare neurodegenerative disease in humans.
Of course, none of this really has anything to do with cloning, which is not particularly prone to produce mutations. Such a mutation could just as well occur spontaneously and be propagated by selective breeding. For that matter, it may have already happened. Such a mutation might be naturally present in any food that we are already eating. There are a number of rare neurodegenerative diseases. It is certainly possible that some of them are due to a protein that is present in wheat or potatoes or corn (all of which have limited genetic variability). If you are really paranoid about this sort of thing, you could avoid eating any food with low genetic variability.
But wait! Who knows how big a dose of the deadly protein it takes to induce the disease? Maybe it takes only a single dose! It is certainly theoretically possible. In that case, eating foods with high genetic variability is precisely the worst thing you can do, because it would increase your risk of exposure to the deadly protein! To be safest, you should be eating only cloned foods and other foods with low genetic variability!
Of course, hardly anybody is going to worry much about the possibility that there might be a harmful prion in the foods that they already eat. It may be a theoretical possibility, but next to other food related risks, such as heart disease and food-borne infections, it is fairly obvious that prions in the diet (which in the worst known case cause human disease only very rarely) are far, far down on the worry list. But tie it to a new technology, and suddenly it is seen as horribly plausible. Fundamentally, however, it is merely another rationalization for fear of change--an unreasoning paranoia about anything that is new and different.
Shit, sharks more likely to kill me than mad cows? Good To Know! That's it, Snappy McFishes is going back to the aquarium where I bought him. I am so bad at picking out good pets.
The nuclear reactor reference is from a clasic one-time Saturday Night Live skit. Ed Asner was hosting and played the part of a retiring nuclear engineer. His last words to the people in the plant were "just remember, you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor". After he leaves, the reactor overheats. An argument ensues over what he meant. With lines like: "We should flood the reactor core, because hey, you can't put too much water in a reactor" being countered by "we should drain the reactor core! You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor. There must be too much in there. That's why it's overheating."
The team is split, so they put it to a vote, and "drain the reactor" wins.
The final scene is Ed sitting on the beach, sipping a drink. A nuclear explosion appears in the distance. The waiter aks about it and he explains that it must be a test or something. His advice to the waiter? "just remember, you can't look too long at a nuclear explosion".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So imagine the poor Agraadzrk (I have no idea how it's spelled) beeing eaten by Arthur Dent OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
I'll save you the trouble, I am biased
"And, you will be navigating the streets to get there. Still biased."
Actually, I don't need to leave my house today to get food seeing how I live with my mom. Also, crossing the street wasn't one of the examples I used, I omitted that because it was in the second set of examples and I was focusing on the first. Yes, I'm still biased.
"Bullshit. Unless you're talking about puffer fish or the like, bullshit. Name a few. Bias still in effect."
Mad cow. Sick chickens, pigs, turkeys, and other assorted animals also are a danger if consumed. And I'm still biased.
Your creative use of ellipsis to make me look like I'm contradicting myself was cute, but I was "not debating weather or not this sickness is rare", I was disagreeing with the likeliness of catching it in comparison to other dangers out there. A shark attack, and Lightning strikes are pretty effing rare normally. You have to actually go looking for those. It's not like a shark is gonna walk up to you in a bar and club you.
:3 rawr.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I'm a student of Microbiology. One reason to object to eating cloned animals is that a single defect may cause disease on a large scale. This is the same as previous posts. Physiology? There's lots of ways this can happen. For instance a genetic predisposition to particular bacterial or parasitic infections (Hooray for microbiology!).
A benefit might be that some cloned animals have a statistically lower carrier rate for certain known pathogens. Others might genetically 'prefer' less virulent pathogens. Still, my experience with microbes tells me that having only a few clone models as a food supply is a patently bad idea. Something like a statistical time-bomb where everything is fine for a long long time but when it goes wrong the consequences are huge (either for the animal population or the ones eating them).
All this is not a reason to avoid using cloned meat sources. Instead it gives us good reason to pause and consider the various outcomes of our actions. I think reasonable study of the issue will reveal that cloned meat is mostly fine but requires some industry regulation to ensure adequate genetic diversity in the food supply (which may not be much diversity, but that's a matter for another day).
I hope this is obvious: Remember, it's not so much the genetic mutations in the GE/Cloned meat were worried about. It's the mutations in the various pathogens that infect (zoonotically or as a reservoir) said meat. Perhaps the GE/Cloned meat is predisposed to a soon-in-the-future human pathogen. Ok, now I'm done. Cheers, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Ed
Why should we eat "cloned" animals as opposed to normal ones? They eat the same amount of feed, and produce the same meat/milk. Isn't it more expensive to clone animals instead of the artificial insemenation method we already use? Isn't it pointless/dangerous to be eating cloned meat when we might as well just be eating animals that reproduce?
Twinstiq, game news
And gee, look! We have lots and lots of fat people today with heart problems. Go figure. --Not that I'm suggesting that the Food Pyramid now playing on a school library wall near you is the cause of all those hamburgers, but it sure doesn't help, nor does it cast the FDA in a favorable light.
Anybody who trusts the FDA in any matter at all is asking to get sick. They serve big business, not the people. I don't know if a cloned chicken is going to kill me or not, and I don't care. I made the choice and went to the trouble to get to know personally the organic farmers who raise and care for the living things that I eat.
It's a contract with life you make when you are born. You will take life in order to live. Since that's the only viable option, other than death, it's important to treat the lives you are taking with love and respect.
-FL
Canada is the only country in the world where beef consuption increased after a case of "mad cow disease" was reported. This makes me proud to belong to a country where average citzens do not fall prey to hysteria, and actually bought more beef to help out local beef producers.
Anarchists never rule
The FDA's ruling essentially states that if the original is OK, then all clones are automatically OK, even if they make Frankenstein's monster look like a pinup model. That simply is not acceptable. Because the risk of genetic defects is hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than normal, then tests for the suitability of those animals should equally be hundreds, if not thousands, of times stricter to catch defects that are hazardous to human health. (We learned the dangers through the spread of prion-based diseases. With increased risk, you MUST have increased vigilance.)
I have no objection to genetically-verified clones entering the food chain, but sufficient tests to determine that the meat is safe would cost as much as the animal itself, and cloning is always going to be more expensive than locking male and female animals in a field together. In the end, the only way to make cloning a cost-effective method is to eliminate not only the validation of successful cloning but to also eliminate all safeguards currently in place in the industry.
In other words, it can be safe, it can be practical, it CAN'T be both. Not yet. Maybe someday, but not yet.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I was thinking we could call it deja-food because it tastes like a meal you've had before.
Also, will all the cloned animals start to taste like chicken?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I don't get it. If a cloned animal eats you, you're dead. How can that be safe?
Duped. And it's not funny. What we're really dealing with here is the privatization of the worlds food supply. We now have genetically modified crops that are patented. Seeds blow onto your land and grow, some company sues the crap out of you for patent violations and you lose your farm. Mission Accomplished! Next up, Livestock. How long before some company decides to patent their chickencowpig (CCP) clone and sell it cheaper than naturally born CCP? Next thing you know, naturally grown CCP becomes extinct and the only thing left is Brand X CCP now with genetically modified whatever. So there, being a Vegitarian doesn't save you. You've already been duped. I'm so glad the FDA is looking out for out best interests
But the rest of us don't care if you eat meat or not, it just leaves more tasty critters for us. We just get tired of the preaching.
We can only conclude that beef deficiency leads to self-righteousness and smugness. And possibly the desire to drive a hybrid or electric car.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
You are a dolt.
Government officials don't know it's not Dolly.
That Wiki article also says that vCJD (the human vs. of BSE) probably has a long latency period, just like BSE itself. Problem is, there is no way to test for latent BSE or latent vCJD. So, there might be a few hundred more cases that are still latent, but might become active at some future time.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Those who think as the above can go fuck themselves, as they are living in a fools paradise if they think that cloning the same animal over and over again will be without cost. We do not let first cousins marry. We do not marry our brothers and sisters. Yet we are going to put an animal on the marketplace and make billions of copies of it. Let's say that this is akin to farming the same crop on the same field year in and year out. They do just that near where I live. It is called seed corn. Farmers here are under contract to do it in the face of the fact that doing this is known bad farming practice to the soil. This takes nutrients, the same nutrients out the soil year after year wearing the soil out. The result is the now necessity of using great quantities of chemical fertilizer in order to bring a crop. That is not all. Parasites, insects, and crop diseases just love this kind of farming as it presents a constant table running over with joy...for them and not for the farmer, for prices, or us. So it will be the same for clones. These critters will be so susceptible to certain diseases that they will have to be packed with antibiotics all of their lives in order to even survive to get to your table. As a result, all manner of resistant disease bacteria and protozoa will be bred into the fabric of our society. These antibiotics will stay in the meat and we will consume this meat, becoming dosed with them ourselves. Thus we will be taking part, involuntarily as no 'responsible' meat company will let its customers know that they are being screwed, in a great experiment leading to a huge pandemic that will sweep all the clones and most of the humans that eat them in a charnel house of death of the industry's making.
"The Y2K Bug" is a basically a media hoax. How many people in this world have died to "The Y2K Bug"? None? You have a better chance of dying in a swimming pool, driving a car, riding a bike, or being struck by lightening. Seriously, you are far more likely to be eaten by a shark then killed by "The Y2K Bug". etc. You get the picture.
Clearly the right answer is just to eat all of the hippies. It's politically savvy to - no one would be left to complain!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Quality of life is more important than quantity of life. Think about it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I love vegitarians! They're my favorite foods!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
4
:D
Itchy
Tasty
Ok, so seriously, am I the only one who's lost on this joke?
Where I come from, it's not that hard to get ethically raised free range animals. You just need to stop shopping at the big supermarket chains and see a real butcher.
That's quite a story, but I don't see what it has to do with the story at hand.
THE BSE CRISIS WAS GOV'T MADE and the road-to-hell is still paved with 'good' (if you believe the frickin' spin) intentions. UK gov't regulations mandated nation-wide use of OrganoPhosphates (OPs) to control the Wobble Fly on all cattle and sheep (as if politicians and bureaucrats knew anything useful about such matters). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organophosphate ... and attendant SUICIDES.
The ORGANIC producers resisted and protested vociferously. Then, though their herds were not infected with BSE they were senselessly slaughtered - by decree - because they were in 'government designated zones'.
The (brain-eroding) BSE/CJD prion was transmitted cross-species (if you will) in OP contaminated offal - that was fed to NON-ORGANIC stock flocks/herds - which led to BSE crisis and, arguably, NEW VARIANT ... NV-CJD ...notwithstanding the dire warnings and dangers Rudolph Steiner (a prime mover of ORGANIC FARMING) put forth against feeding (acidic/brain damaging) animal protein / waste to vegetarian livestock 100-YEARS ago.
The COMPENSATION paid for the massive losses created by government meddling on behalf of the pesticide industry was duly required to contain / address the fiasco.
This was during the reign of the CONSERVATIVE Tory party, and certainly not a socialist subsidy. It was a government created mess, and the government (meaning the voters/taxpayers that elected said government - et al) had to pay. End of story.
Equitable COMPENSATION (otherwise known as damages) for: negligence, malfeasance, corruption and/or outright stupidity - is a commercial/corporate/capitalist legal liability concept - and not 'socialism' nor a socialist subsidy by a long shot.
Yes. The bloody (as in blood-on-their-hands) 'Limited Liability' corporations (Ltd/Inc) involved got away with it Scott free.
All of the evils of mankind are embodied, and thrive unrestrained, in greedy power-mad ORGANIZATIONS, bar none, and don't you ever forget it.
If the government 'approves' it, there is a damned good chance is it good for corporates and not good for You nor Yours.
FIND: Rummy's carcinogenic ASPARTAME BANNED IN EUROPE!
in these orchards are the avacado dogs. These dogs live off almost entirly off avacados, they tend to have gorgeous shiny coats, and are so fat that they are basicaly tube shaped.
So, there you have it. lots of so called carnivors are fairly happy living off fruits and vegitables
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I've thought about it.
I'd like both.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Translation: you are a superstitious cultist who thinks about "technology" the way a savage thinks about "evil spirits".
Have fun living in the Paleolithic, son.
First we had the geniuses who went ahead with the money saving plan "Let's feed sheep's brains to cows!" which resulted in mad cow disease [wikipedia.org] (which, when infected meat is eaten, can cause incurable and fatal neurological disease CJD [wikipedia.org] in humans). Feeding meat to cows was clearly bad and wrong in ways that don't (shouldn't) need explaining to anyone and *blammo*, well what do you know, karma bites.
"Bad and wrong"? I guess that needs explaining to me, as I can't see where it is necessary or even appropriate to use moral adjectives here. Certainly it appears that feeding brains to cows is unwise, and not a very good idea, but wrong? Like morally wrong? I don't understand why. For one thing, morality is a personal phenomenon, so we have no way of knowing the morality of a sheep or a cow. Second, the law does not define this activity as unethical in the sense of violating the "rights" of cows or sheep. So I don't see where the basis lies for ascribing moral characteristics. Again, it's a dumb thing to do, and because we now know of the risks to human health it should be prohibited, but you seem to be taking this farther than that...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Clearly the right answer is just to eat all of the hippies. It's politically savvy to - no one would be left to complain!
Lrrr from the planet Omicron Persei VIII already tried that, and it just made his hands look huge.
there, now the thread is complete..
Another reason to become VEGAN forever. IMO it's unethical to clone animals. The purpose of cloning animals is the same idea Hitler had for people: create a superior race. That's like saying "God did not do a good job at creating Man at His image, so I'll make the perfect Man." It's totally so wrong.
Contrary to what you suggest (or indeed, what radical some radical vegan's might suggest), just because people eat meat, doesn't mean they don't care about animals full stop, or that they don't value the life of non-human animals.
It's not as if vegan's are the only ones who - if they see a spider in the bath - would trap it an throw it out a window rather than just kill it and flush it down the plug hole. Empathy for other creatures is a near universal human trait (think of the story of Androcles and the Lion), though there is research to show that others have brain chemistry that doesn't predispose them to it.
We (people as a whole) all know that even by living, we are causing death to others, that doesn't invalidate the benefit of some making some choices that are ultimately less destructive.
In the same way:
Just because people don't send almost all the money they have to staving orphans in much poorer parts of the world (but do spend money on jelly doughnuts for themselves), doesn't mean they don't care about people dying of starvation.
I think the lesson from vCJD and nvCJD is "Try not to fuck too much with the natural order of things." (which might make a good slogan for our times). Again this something some people immediately understand and something some people never come to understand (and dismiss as superstitious clap trap - which is it, but that doesn't mean it's not sound advice).
Whacked out hippies have of course been saying this sort of thing for decades, it's interesting how the general public seems to have grown increasingly receptive to that sort of message.
You work for the FDA, don't you?
Oddly enough, the capta was "repress" as in you're repressing the truth.
Nope, just seeing how technology, economics and LACK of logic and scientific thought are slowly killing this planet, or maybe just ourselves. So many of the posts here are not scientific, but indeed stating something without any proper investigation. You should be ashamed of yourselves calling yourselves geeks.
Clone Schmone. Certain types of twins (or triplets) are clones. The only potential for negative outcomes so far has been a small cultural predelection for doublemint chewing gum. So far, none of those doublemint twins, some potentially are (natural)clones, have shown any overt symptoms or problems, such as chewing with their mouth open or drooling uncontrollably. In fact, I doubt one could determine which of them were the clone and which the original.
As for feeding cattle sheepbrains and perverse stuff like that, it definitely ain't natural. It's understandable that the presence of something infectious (prions?) could and probably would spread. Seems like they'd best be used as filler for haggas, veggie burgers and such. Fortunately, there's only been a couple of cases in cattle of mad cow disease and most of the hype and import bans of american are politically based rather than based on legitimate health concerns.
Feeding cattle is a bit of a problem. It takes about 4 pounds of feed to add 1 pound of cow. While primo rib-eye might go for $15 / pound at the grocery, a cow on the hoof goes for more like $1 - $1.30 for the typical hamburger and roast variety. That's why they are mostly fed grass or perhaps hay.
My take on it, at least: DNA transcription errors, particularly appropriate since the article itself is a dup...
There are two components in evaluating risk. First the probability of the event occurring, but second is the effects of the event occurring. While some things are more likely to happen to any given individual, they are not a significant risk to society because the effects are limited. If I get hit by a car and die, life goes on for the rest of the world. If a significant amount of meat is contaminated and that is not detected before thousands have eaten it, it can have serious repercussions. From making a small town no longer viable to ruining a whole country's food supply.
Things with low probability of happening but potentially disastrous results should be taken more seriously than things that happen regularly without affecting most people's lives or ever placing the survival of a community in danger. If anything, I think the media has caused people to be more fearful of stuff that cannot be helped* and has limited consequences (strange men killing for irrational reasons, kidnappings, etc.) than of actual disasters that could be averted but why bother if it's not 100% guaranteed they will materialize (climate change, disease control, viable water of food supplies, etc.)
* In the sense that while prevention and security are important and rates can be reduced, these will never completely disappear and we have to live with the risks whether we like it or not.
Bananas. They're cloned. All of 'em. Doesn't seem to stop the world eating them in gigantic quantities, and it doesn't seem to be doing anybody any harm. Sure, they're cloned the old-fashioned way, by propagation, but they're a genetic monoculture nonetheless.
To those unable to innately grasp why feeding meat to a herbivore is 'bad and wrong', it is impossible to explain and I suspect that to them, the understanding of it will forever remain an undiscovered country.
"Herbivore" is a human classification. If cows are such herbivores, then why do they favor meat over grass when offered meat? In any case, even if this turns out to be a mistake, a bad idea for practical reasons - I don't see how your hotheaded moralization of the issue does anything other than shed more heat than light on the problem.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Unlike a carnivore, if you were to attempt to feed a herbivore only meat it would become very ill (typically weak, and blind) and soon after die from malnutrition. Of course, even by feeding them some meat (which they are not biologically equipped to deal with), it also makes them prone to diseases they wouldn't otherwise be at risk of - which can then be passed on to anything that in turn eats them. If cows are such herbivores, then why do they favor meat over grass when offered meat? They don't. Given a choice between a dead sheep or another dead cow and some grass, they will pick grass every time - like other sheep, they will stay well away from a dead sheep carcass in a field. They won't so much as nibble at the corpse. I'm guessing your not that familiar with cattle (I grew up in a house in the country and have seen enough dead sheep savaged by dogs).
Just as many cats will fight over chicken flavoured Quorn, they will only do so when tricked into thinking what they are eating is really something else (try getting a cat to eat a mushroom). Hardly surprising, as you can of course fool people that way too.
I'd like both, and a pony! Sadly, life requires trade-offs. People seem far too eager to give up lots of liberty in trade for just the illusion of safety. It's a bad habit, and leads to the TSA becoming the world's leading seizer of hand lotion for no purpose at all. Of course, liberty isn't the only component of quality of life (something libhertarians sometimes forget) but it's one we seem quite eager to give away these days.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So chicken > human?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
! That is exactly correct. Of course, I would be interested to know why my post was moderated "redundant," while the ones below are "funny." Not that I really care -- karma doesn't matter since it is no longer a number, but it confuzzles me. :\
Rhapsody in Numbers
I have to admit, I was surprised when the person after me also got modded funny -- I thought it would work for one last post.