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Cloned beef, anyone?

A government food safety panel has stated that meat from cloned cows and pigs is safe to eat:

A working group of the Food Safety Commission has compiled an evaluation report draft saying that such clones and their offspring were as safe as regular cows and pigs.

In the near future, an expert panel on newly developed food and the Food Safety Commission will discuss the issue, and will report the results of their evaluation to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Based on this, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will consider whether to lift a ban on using beef and pork from somatic cell clones.

{democracy:344}

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31 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - January 20, 2009 at 6:45 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags:

christopher

If it really is cloned, as in an exact duplicate, then yeah I’d eat it. I really don’t understand why people wouldn’t, I can’t see this as any sort of problem. In fact, the largest and healthiest cows / chickens / whatever could be cloned en masse as a safe and economical food source some day.

http://jpop.technotaku.com Xacur

Maybe people think that it needs a “soul” to be eaten.

sliders_alpha

how can you say that? they are living being, of course they have a soul.

the only difference betxen a clone and a regular one is theyr birth

The Overthinker

I seriously wonder what the Pope’s stance on cows having souls is. I tend to think he might not agree.
Dangomushi

Sorry to disappoint you sliders_alpha… but there’s really no tangible scientific evidence for the existence of a “soul” (or ghosty parts) in anyone… but what do I know, I’m just your skeptical 無神論者 type fellow.

Either way, I do detect a trace of thee old “sarcasm” in Xacur’s post… something people on the interbutts seem to have a hard time picking up on.
sliders_alpha

“I seriously wonder what the Pope’s stance ” i don’t care, i’m atheis

“but there’s really no tangible scientific evidence for the existence of a “soul””

by soul i mean, “the little thing” that make me exist, even if i’m just matter, i’m here, i am existing, thinking, I AM.

what i mean was, those cow are no different from regular cow

spirit, soul, cousciousness, me, it’s all the same for me

The Overthinker

If the cloning is good enough to be viable – if the animal can live – then we can eat it.
Jerry

If I can eat a two-headed cow, I can eat a cloned cow
Dangomushi

Cloning is just another form or reproduction… I see no reason why the meat wouldn’t be just as good/healthy/etc…
http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

The problem is that things can go wrong in the cloning process that we can’t predict and that may not occur in natural ways of reproduction. What if the DNA of the cloned animal get’s contaminated in an unusual way that isn’t visible on the outside but has long-term effects on persons who consume the animal’s meat?

Personally, I’d maybe eat it, if it’s specially labeled and if it has quality and price advantadges over normal meat. But even then probably not regularly.

We eat too much meat anyway, especially here in Germany. ^^

The Overthinker

Tons of things can go wrong with natural reproduction anyway.

menrui

no, “tons of things” dont go wrong in natural reproduction. after hundred of millions of evolution of the eukaryotic cell, its actually very efficient.

menrui

hundred of millions of years*
LB

Yes, natural reproduction is “very efficient” and doesn’t “go wrong”. That is why between 1 and 10 fetii in 10,000 are anencephalic, 1 in 1000 children have Down’s Syndrome, 6 in 1000 are autistic.

Or why calves are born with 2 heads, or 6 legs, or albinism, or… or… or….

And those are just the surviving (well, aside from anencephalic fetii) examples. In humans, 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage in the first 6 weeks, and about half of those miscarriages have been shown to be due to chromosomal disorders in the fetus.

So yes, tons of things can and do go wrong, routinely, with natural reproduction.
menrui

no, i never said “doesnt go wrong”

calves born with 2 head are rare, but they are shown on TV more often than the other 1.5billion cows.

so you’re saying correctly replicating 3billion DNA bases, then correctly attaching them to another 3billion DNA bases(which were also replicated), then successfully going through birth close to 3 out of 4 times, isnt efficient?
The Overthinker

And you have completely failed to read my original statement. There is a small but significant difference between the words “can” and “do.”

“no, i never said “doesnt go wrong””

You’re right – you said “don’t* go wrong.” Can you elucidate on the difference here?

*Actually you said “dont”, which is not a word I am familiar with. I see “cant” often, and wonder why the references to slopes or angles…
menrui

irrelevant

menrui

hundreds of millions of year*

Intricate

If the DNA gets contaminated too much during the process the subject is not going to be able to live. All other mutations will just be similar to what happens during non-clone related processes.

There is no need to be afraid that some sort of “scary virus/germ” will emerge from the cell-multiplication-gone-bad. The chance of that happening is equally big as in nature, which is basically 0 anyway.

I do agree with the labelling of cloned products though. Because some people might have moral issues with it and therefore will not want to eat such “lab”-meat.

And to do a wild prediction for the future. I think that eventually we’ll be going to eat meat that has not been attached to a cow at all. I’m sure that eventually we’ll just be eating cells that have been cultivated as some type of meat (sirloin, entrecôte, T-bone) as one huge slab of tissue, never having been attached to something that had legs and a brain and could walk around eating grass.

menrui

agreed, if the DNA does get “contiminated” prior the embryo stage, cloning will be unsuccessful, or the cow would be obviously effed up.

virus/germs are way too complex, therefore its nearly impossible for some kind of random mutation to give rise to them.

IMO, eating a cloned cow is safer than buying milk from china(low blow~)

The Overthinker

“eating a cloned cow is safer than buying milk from china(low blow~)”

Nope, seems like a fair call to me these days….

kabocha

I’m not sure what people mean exactly by “contaminated” DNA. Seriously. With what, BSE, flu? Those are acquired problems. In order for food to be harmful via cell generation (i.e. growing) alone it has to produce some sort of toxin or potential allergen from the beginning. You know, like those genetically engineered tomatoes that produced some sort of fish protein.

Look, we can probably eat a retarded cow, or even one with, say, Huntington’s disease (genetically transmittable and gets worse with every generation; ok, ok, I don’t know if cows can really have Huntington’s disease, just an example). Anyway, so something went “wrong” with their DNA, but I would think it would make no difference to us because it all gets digested in our tummies. Meat is meat. You know, like Soilant Green. If, say the cells of the cow contained a gene that produce cholera toxin, yeah, I might not eat it (but maybe the cow wouldn’t live in the first place).

I would hope that those who are doing the cloning would have pretty good control over whether their animals contain any genes that might code for something harmful.. It’s in their interest to do so, economically, that is.

So, yeah, I’d eat cloned beef. It probably tastes exactly like the real stuff. I mean EXACTLY.
http://www.hormel.com VonSkippy

Although I would probably eat cloned beef – I still think all the facts/proof that it’s absolutly safe is far from being there.

The argument that it’s a living cow and therefore due to the complexity of “being alive” is proof that it’s safe is pretty weak – Typhoid Mary was a living Mary and look what happened there.

Currently, cloning is far from foolproof, and most evidence points that there is some abnormalities at the cell level reproduction (Dolly the sheep developed autoimmune problems very early in her life, other clones have reproduction problems, etc). Does that directly translate into danger at the food level – probably not, but the key word is probably.

Personally I’ll let others be the guinea pigs and wait a few years.

The Overthinker

Well, could we have eaten Typhoid Mary? And, more to the point, this is comparing apples and oranges.

In any event, doing a little more reading, it seems that much of this argument is moot – the cloned animals will be used for breeding stock. Which I guess makes far more sense.

Farside

Far more sense? Cloned animals used as breeding stock? Were it even possible, consider what normally happens when members of the same family group mate: weakened gene pool, genetic mutations, evolutionary failure. Do that on a large scale and you could render whole species of animals crippled/inedible within a few generations.

The Overthinker

The process works well enough for the animal to be alive, which is a notoriously difficult thing to be. The cow, in other words, functions as a cow.
http://jpop.technotaku.com Xacur

I don’t understand you question. The answer you are looking for is “a = a” or something like this?
Are you asking for proof that you can eat a cow?
leitmotiv

“and your proof of this is..?”

There is no rock-solid proof as in a mathmatical proof or something. It can only proved as in “deemed safe enough based on everything we currently know and have observed”. Similar principle to drug approval. If something wierd turns up in the future, the topic of safty of this type of food would probaby be reevaluated.
The Overthinker

The fact that the cow is alive and well is all the proof needed. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is a cow, a proper cow, and thus can be eaten.
LB

“…then we can eat it.”

“I reiterate, your proof is..?”

Mcdonald’s.

Case closed
The Overthinker

Random references to unnamed authority figures is poor debate. If you must reference authority, then do it through citations. Absent evidence to the contrary, and that is actual evidence, not speculation, in what sense is a cloned cow not a cow? Absence of evidence to the contrary is hardly a weak argument. It means the case for the prosecution has not been made.

Oh, and for anyone wanting a little more beef in the argument, the FDA doesn’t see a problem either:
“After six years of intensive research on whether meat, muscle tissue and milk from cloned animals are fit for human consumption, the FDA says they “are as safe as food we eat every day.”"

Cloned beef, anyone?

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