Better You Than Me

So the debate has begun. The Food and Drug Administration announced recently that cloned animals are safe for consumption. And as usual, this has created quite a large schism with a large gap between those who support the idea and those who are sickened by it. It's an interesting concept though the ramifications of it are a bit more than what many people may expect. As it is, people have a big problem with the fact that animals have been cloned in the first place. They argue that this means that in the near future, scientists would begin cloning people as well. Not that the cloned people would be used for consumption but it all comes down to the fact that people feel that it is going against God and nature to do such a thing.

This arguement makes the assumption that everyone out there is as equally religious as the next guy. It sounds a bit daft that all people are created religiously equal when we have so many wars stemming from religion going on anyways. But I digress; the issue here is whether or not eating cloned animals is a good thing. In listening to the reaction of people there are many who think that if scientists say it is safe for consumption then it must be true and they would be willing to try. Others say that it wouldn't be real meat and therefore, how can it be claimed that it is safe for consumption? The expansion on that arguement being that some of what makes Angus Beef so good would be lost because of the cloning process. I can understand if the beef in question is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. But if you are looking at a first generation clone, where's the harm in that?

Right now it is a vast unknown. We have not had the opportunity to consume anything cloned (or perhaps we have and have just not known it) and so it will be difficult to say with absolute certainty whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. From my standpoint, it is like making the meat industry more like the manufactured food industry. What do I mean by that? Well let's think about it. If you buy a bag of Oreo cookies in DC and the fly out to San Francisco and buy another bag, you're not likely going to be able to tell where they came from. They all came from the same source and so they taste the same. Similarly, I believe that if we clone a cow and then prepare steaks from it, it should taste the same as the original. If the original was tasty then there's no reason why the cloned copy should be any worse.

As far as the safety and sanity of eating a cloned animal, be it a cow or lamb, it is just this initial outcry that is going to slow down the process. Growing up I was always told that you should never eat raw foods or anything not cooked properly. Now I'm not Japanese nor am I so much a bachelor that I don't know how to cook meat properly but I'm not so blind as to realize that sushi and rare steak are very popular dishes. I'm sure when sushi first came to Western civilization it was looked upon with a certain amount of hesitancy given the fact that it was basically raw fish. Now it is a common place. Who knows, maybe in a few years people won't want to eat anything but cloned meat.