What's wrong with cloned, or for that matter genetically modified, foods? I always see things against them on TH, but no one ever really explains what's wrong with them. It just seems to be one of those things that some environmentalists just blindly judge as being bad, while showing no evidence.

The problem with cloned livestock is that there isn't enough information.

What is wrong with cloned meat? I'll give you two answers. one is that it reduces (severley reduces) genetic variation. so you may ask, so what? that just means a more consistent flavor of the meat and milk! ok fine, sure. But the decrease in genetic variation leads to all those exactly same (or close to it) animals being put at risk for a disease such as a bacteria, virus, fungus, worm parasite, insect, amoeba, something to come along and effect ALL the clones. So you might say well that is what vaccines, hormones, and antimicrobial medicines are for, to keep the animal immune system strong. yeah ok, well this whole cycle or progression could be completely avoided if we kept the genetic variation up by allowing normal breading or animals. Increased number of genes that code for, or help with, resistance towards a disease, allows for greater potential for disease resistance and thus survivability of a species. remember the Southern corn leaf blight of 1970? monoculture much?
The second thing is remember dolly the sheep? well if you heard very soon after she was born she developed aging defects similar to her "mother." The reason? Very technical. Basically dollys inherited DNA had been age degenerated by her mother at the point where the scientiest took her DNA. It's like a snapshot of time..take the DNA for cloning right at birth then you have younge fresh and viable DNA for a clone, take it at old age it comes with genetic baggage like grandpas bum knee due to arthrits. Also mutations causing cancer can be passed to "offspring" in cloning....mmmmmm cancer. This whole process (excluding the cancer bit, but berhaps also) is strongly suspected to be cause by the DNA degredation and desablization due to decreased Telomere length on the ends of chromosomes. Everytime you replicate a cell you loose a little bit of this protecting DNA on your chromosomes (long story), and can eventually start to loose parts of your functional DNA thus effection there viability, proper expression and thus normal protien function. Look it up for yourself if you don't believe me or get the whole process.
Now see I'm not fully against cloning...I say lets get a freaking T-rex already!! But our science has consequences and we must protect certain things durring this process, such as living organisms rights and our food and health. There is a reason why we don't kill cows for food by tourturing them first! And no it's not because it might cause stringy meat, it's because as the dominant and seemingly smartest organism on this planet it is our responsibility to protect and take care of all the animals and ecosystems, ensuring their viable and fruitfull life. We brought this on our selves by the way with too much environmental devistation.
Now let me propose a question to you...we as scientists can grow ears, liver, nerves and such in vitro. Would you eat a "steak" that was grown in a monoculture dish and cut from a slab of growing muscle tissue? this may be were the humans of the future must get their meat from after the robots take over the planet, But I would like to try prevent that (the muscle slab steak, not the robots taking over. Because if you really think of it, it could be the next an logical evolutionary step on this planet).
I'm not trying to be fully negative on the whole GMO issue, we need it to some extent but we have to be careful, really careful.
And one last thing...before saying that someone shouldn't just blindly judge something to be bad, or ok to do in your case, why don't you do your own research first ;) Please add more or critique is anyone wishes.

I guess the FDA will approve what it's paid to but I don't think the US will find the rest of the world leaping to buy cloned beef...
What is so wrong with organic?
It's worked for thousands of years.
Why is the US so hell bent on improving nature and doing it so quickly?

Spoken like a true employee of Monsanto, Ross.

Seriously, if you want to eat plants that have synthesized DNA then go for it. Call me kooky, but I believe Earth got it right the first time. There is ZERO benefit to GMOs unless you are invested in the company that's selling the crap.

The FDA is not inherently evil, but the bureaucracy of it is. The white coat scientists try to warn us, but the greedy white collars that sign their paychecks have a different agenda.

This is sick. It serves mankind in absolutely no way at all.

What is an American's definition of "perfect"? The unblemished nectarine, the greenest asparagus, the sweetest grapefruit ---the "grapple" (grape-apple hybrid)!

Now we can have "Bessie's" milk, "Bessie's" meat, and even "Bessie's" cow tongue a thousand times over in one lifetime? Wow, what a dream! And great quality control too---its sameness is so very comforting. It's like getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks: no matter where you go in this great nation, you know that you're still guaranteed to get that uniform burnt-to-heck tasting cup of crud they call coffee EVERY TIME!

For a nation full of people who always seem to be so concerned with asserting their "individuality", why are so many Americans so complacent in fighting against madness like this? And stuff like this happens over and over and over again (just look at companies like Monsanto)! Isn't this blasphemy against nature or "God's" creation? In the end, the FDA will approve cloned meat, people will buy it and consume it, and very few will question why they've developed wooly coats and say "baaaa" from time to time.

I did read another article about this and that article said that even if it is approved its far to expensive to clone these animals for slaughtering purposes only. what his has mostly been used for is to clone animals that are considered valuable for breeding purposes. Lets say you have an excellent bull that you use for breeding. That bull is eventually going to die or start shooting blanks or any number of other problems. Cloning means you don't have to worry about loosing that bull because you could clone another. The animals we would be eating would be the offspring of the cloned animals, not the cloned animals themselves.

By cloning cows on a massive scale it could lead to much larger issues, such as, eventual tests on humans. This is just another sick venture for the medical community to profit in the long run... It sickens me

By cloning cows on a massive scale it could lead to much larger issues, such as, eventual tests on humans. This is just another sick venture for the medical community to profit in the long run... It sickens me

Does anyone seriously think the corn they eat is not genetically modified? And I don't mean through recent additions of vitamins or innate pesticides. An ear of corn should be the size of your finger, but over centuries we as a species genetically modified it to be larger and more edible. The difference is that we did it in an indirect, plodding way as a opposed to a new, perhaps overly-hasty way. The same goes for all of our livestock, which we modified via husbandry, which is genetic modification of a species, into their current forms. And it isn't just the US that has been "hell bent" on improving nature. All of humanity took a basket of species millennia ago and tweaked them to our liking over time. And the resulting impact on the rest of the environment has been substantial.

So please stop framing this issue in terms of whether something is genetically modified or not. The real issue is whether the way we are trying to do it now is going to be more beneficial than they way we have been doing it, and if there are going to be unforeseen consequences to our new, more direct methods that may outweigh the potential benefits.

We need more thoughtful responses like Geoffrey's and less reactionary, rhetoric laden nonsense. This has nothing to do with evil, it is not unique to Americans, and such overly-simplistic and crass responses only drive people away from the debate.

And as a related postscript: Cancer is organic. Feces is organic. Everything containing carbon is organic. And as stated above we used what would be considered organic methods to drastically change the face of the world with our agriculture long before we discovered DNA. Organic is not an adjective to be used in place of "good" or "healthy".

Thanks to Steve and Geoffrey for bringing actual, important and knowledgeable information to this discussion. I begin to tire of seeing TH's bandwagon-esque articles attacking GMO. I would enjoy more balanced coverage. Of course the problem is not with informed environmentally conscious people, but the uninformed masses.

A second thanks to Steve and Geoffrey, and reiteration of thesherm's call for more balanced coverage. Environmentalists do all us eco-minded folk a disservice when they make unsubstantiated doomsday implications. A responsible article on GMO ought to include the specific safety worries rather than just saying "Consumer groups have been up in arms, citing ethical worries and the lack of sufficient data to ascertain the products' safety", else we all end up looking as foolish as, say, CAFE, or religious fundamentalists (after all, those consumer groups (why are they unnamed?) could be *anyone* as we all well know).

Links to intelligent speculation on the possibilities of harm specific to cloning would be awesome, because as far as I understand (which isn't very) it involves taking the DNA from the donor animal and swapping it into a fertilized ovum -- no bizarre recombinations of DNA here. Seems that such a maneuver would be unlikely to create a cow that was doing things un-cow-like. In general, if the genetic modification is not causing the organism to synthesize toxins or something, I don't understand what else might go wrong. We eat tons and tons of DNA all the time, and it generally leaves us healthy and nourished (unless the DNA is, rather, viral RNA).

Also: "Frankenfood"? If i remember correctly, Frankenstein's creation was a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and emotionally rich creature -- the conflict arises from his being rejected from the family of man.

A second thanks to Steve and Geoffrey, and reiteration of thesherm's call for more balanced coverage. Environmentalists do all us eco-minded folk a disservice when they make unsubstantiated doomsday implications. A responsible article on GMO ought to include the specific safety worries rather than just saying "Consumer groups have been up in arms, citing ethical worries and the lack of sufficient data to ascertain the products' safety", else we all end up looking as foolish as, say, CAFE, or religious fundamentalists (after all, those consumer groups (why are they unnamed?) could be *anyone* as we all well know).

Links to intelligent speculation on the possibilities of harm specific to cloning would be awesome, because as far as I understand (which isn't very) it involves taking the DNA from the donor animal and swapping it into a fertilized ovum -- no bizarre recombinations of DNA here. Seems that such a maneuver would be unlikely to create a cow that was doing things un-cow-like. In general, if the genetic modification is not causing the organism to synthesize toxins or something, I don't understand what else might go wrong. We eat tons and tons of DNA all the time, and it generally leaves us healthy and nourished (unless the DNA is, rather, viral RNA).

Also: "Frankenfood"? If i remember correctly, Frankenstein's creation was a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and emotionally rich creature -- the conflict arises from his being rejected from the family of man.

A second thanks to Steve and Geoffrey, and reiteration of thesherm's call for more balanced coverage. Environmentalists do all us eco-minded folk a disservice when they make unsubstantiated doomsday implications. A responsible article on GMO ought to include the specific safety worries rather than just saying "Consumer groups have been up in arms, citing ethical worries and the lack of sufficient data to ascertain the products' safety", else we all end up looking as foolish as, say, CAFE, or religious fundamentalists (after all, those consumer groups (why are they unnamed?) could be *anyone* as we all well know).

Links to intelligent speculation on the possibilities of harm specific to cloning would be awesome, because as far as I understand (which isn't very) it involves taking the DNA from the donor animal and swapping it into a fertilized ovum -- no bizarre recombinations of DNA here. Seems that such a maneuver would be unlikely to create a cow that was doing things un-cow-like. In general, if the genetic modification is not causing the organism to synthesize toxins or something, I don't understand what else might go wrong. We eat tons and tons of DNA all the time, and it generally leaves us healthy and nourished (unless the DNA is, rather, viral RNA).

Also: "Frankenfood"? If i remember correctly, Frankenstein's creation was a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and emotionally rich creature -- the conflict arises from his being rejected from the family of man.

A second thanks to Steve and Geoffrey, and reiteration of thesherm's call for more balanced coverage. Environmentalists do all us eco-minded folk a disservice when they make unsubstantiated doomsday implications. A responsible article on GMO ought to include the specific safety worries rather than just saying "Consumer groups have been up in arms, citing ethical worries and the lack of sufficient data to ascertain the products' safety", else we all end up looking as foolish as, say, CAFE, or religious fundamentalists (after all, those consumer groups (why are they unnamed?) could be *anyone* as we all well know).

Links to intelligent speculation on the possibilities of harm specific to cloning would be awesome, because as far as I understand (which isn't very) it involves taking the DNA from the donor animal and swapping it into a fertilized ovum -- no bizarre recombinations of DNA here. Seems that such a maneuver would be unlikely to create a cow that was doing things un-cow-like. In general, if the genetic modification is not causing the organism to synthesize toxins or something, I don't understand what else might go wrong. We eat tons and tons of DNA all the time, and it generally leaves us healthy and nourished (unless the DNA is, rather, viral RNA).

Also: "Frankenfood"? If i remember correctly, Frankenstein's creation was a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and emotionally rich creature -- the conflict arises from his being rejected from the family of man.

i would like to pose a question of purpose to cloning farm animals in the first place. Is it because cloning more cost effective and less time consuming than the good ol' fashioned method of raising and herding dairy cows? I thought the process of isolating, culturing, and stimulating parent cells to divide was arduous and enormously expensive.
In response to the comment of the clone inheriting genetic defects and higher risk of cancer, it can be solved by cloning a younger cow with much significantly fewer genetic defects.

Cloning a younger cow doesn't simply solve the problem, until the animal is older you don't know what problems or cancers it will have. You could clone one then let it get older and see if the DNA you took at the younger age was then OK or optimal to use. But as Tina says simply cloning a younger one will not allow you to get past the age related diseases (besides perhaps some mutations for cancer). I would say thought this point of inherited disease and age related defects is not as big of a concern as the one of limited genetic diversity. That is the truly concerning part. I suggested the Corn blight as an example and I have thought of another one, Bananas. I believe that they have been so monocultured around the world (not to mention to limit the size and presence of seeds) that it will be very hard to continue this industry. Although I will say I'm not too up on the Banana industry.
One other point that I would like to add is that if you think of inbreeding (and not like that my redneck friends, so calm down) the likelihood of a bad phenotype (a diseased or negative trait, such as the typical arthritis, that is negative for the survival of the animal) being expressed goes WAY up. Hence why we discourage cousin or siblin lovin because the genes are so similar. Cloned cows if wide spread would suffer the same problems, increased negative traits if allowed to breed. Now I will give one out on this argument myself. There is a small number of subspecies of cow (and I forget their name right now) that exists over in Europe, that was put through a bottleneck event where only a few cows were allowed to breed and by fluke no negative traits were in those cows. So when they bred they essentially produced "perfect" calf's with no defects that could then freely breed with any sibling or parent or any other to still make a perfect offspring.
So yes all one needs is the "perfect" cow to clone and you'll be off to the races! good luck with that! :P And I know I just gave an example of a perfect cow...however, there is one clause, mutations will always occur, and they will eventually start new alleles of genes with negative phenotypic diseases undoing all that work to get rid of them. By the way the idea of the perfect animal could be used for the only argument to make sense of the bible and all the rampant inbreeding that occurred with Mr Adam and Ms Eve's children, and then again after with Mr. Noah and his small family that made it through the alleged story of the flood. But by the time Noah was around that was unlikely cause there was lots of bad genetic diseases at that time and he and his family probably carried some dormant genetic defects just itching to be expressed in their children.
Last thought, Cheetahs are another example of what I am talking about with above as they have gone through a bottle neck and will cause problems in the future in trying to breed them back to larger numbers, but you can look that topic up on your own if you want. Please comment or feel free to critique.

Cloning a younger cow doesn't simply solve the problem, until the animal is older you don't know what problems or cancers it will have. You could clone one then let it get older and see if the DNA you took at the younger age was then OK or optimal to use. But as Tina says simply cloning a younger one will not allow you to get past the age related diseases (besides perhaps some mutations for cancer). I would say thought this point of inherited disease and age related defects is not as big of a concern as the one of limited genetic diversity. That is the truly concerning part. I suggested the Corn blight as an example and I have thought of another one, Bananas. I believe that they have been so monocultured around the world (not to mention to limit the size and presence of seeds) that it will be very hard to continue this industry. Although I will say I'm not too up on the Banana industry.
One other point that I would like to add is that if you think of inbreeding (and not like that my redneck friends, so calm down) the likelihood of a bad phenotype (a diseased or negative trait, such as the typical arthritis, that is negative for the survival of the animal) being expressed goes WAY up. Hence why we discourage cousin or siblin lovin because the genes are so similar. Cloned cows if wide spread would suffer the same problems, increased negative traits if allowed to breed. Now I will give one out on this argument myself. There is a small number of subspecies of cow (and I forget their name right now) that exists over in Europe, that was put through a bottleneck event where only a few cows were allowed to breed and by fluke no negative traits were in those cows. So when they bred they essentially produced "perfect" calf's with no defects that could then freely breed with any sibling or parent or any other to still make a perfect offspring.
So yes all one needs is the "perfect" cow to clone and you'll be off to the races! good luck with that! :P And I know I just gave an example of a perfect cow...however, there is one clause, mutations will always occur, and they will eventually start new alleles of genes with negative phenotypic diseases undoing all that work to get rid of them. By the way the idea of the perfect animal could be used for the only argument to make sense of the bible and all the rampant inbreeding that occurred with Mr Adam and Ms Eve's children, and then again after with Mr. Noah and his small family that made it through the alleged story of the flood. But by the time Noah was around that was unlikely cause there was lots of bad genetic diseases at that time and he and his family probably carried some dormant genetic defects just itching to be expressed in their children.
Last thought, Cheetahs are another example of what I am talking about with above as they have gone through a bottle neck and will cause problems in the future in trying to breed them back to larger numbers, but you can look that topic up on your own if you want. Please comment or feel free to critique.

Steve, give me a break.

There is an enormous difference between selective breeding and genetic engineering, and you know it.

One difference is that the former has been tested for thousands of years, while the latter is decades old.

If you want to play god, I suggest you do it slowly and responsibly.

@Tina: You're right, cloning is ridiculously expensive. As long as it remains so expensive, it's only useful for things like making a clone of a prized breeding bull so that when he dies, you've got an organism with similar sperm to replace him. Of course, that's totally unnecessary if one of his calfs has better traits than he, so cloning won't be used all the time in that arena necessarily. As far as I know, that's where things stand at the moment. The WSJ article was a helpful source to get info like that.

@John M: "There is an enormous difference between selective breeding and genetic engineering, and you know it." There are also a lot of similarities, and you know it. However, you're right. In general, one would never be able to breed a cow with a jelly-fish to get a the cow to produce jellyfish-like bioluminescence, though one can do so with genetic engineering. So the range of possibilities is greater. I'm wondering what possibilities people are afraid of. So far, no answers.

Also, from the WSJ article (not that one anecdote proves anything): "It took years for consumers to accept pasteurized milk as safe."

One thing coloned animals have problems with...is age.

Dolly the sheep for instance, was already developing arthritis basically at the age of a teenager in humans.

Cloning animals is fine, but the DNA used to create the clones will still be as old as the subject used to create the clone...meaning they will develop age-related problems...at an age where they will be unexpected. Arthritis may just be the start of a bigger problem with using cloned animals for food.

Personally I have no problems with it...meat is meat, and my stomach will digest it as so, but I understand some people's points against it.

Hope that gives some insight into people.

it's just superstition.

some people will always believe the earth was created in 7 days, and you can't convince them otherwise with science. some people will always believe GMO's are dangerous, no matter what. and science won't convince them either.

superstition is just part of human nature.

it's just superstition.

some people will always believe the earth was created in 7 days, and you can't convince them otherwise with science. some people will always believe GMO's are dangerous, no matter what. and science won't convince them either.

superstition is just part of human nature.