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Jan. 11th, 2007 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
microbieI'm perplexed by the disdain consumers are showing for meat from cloned animals. I understand the reticence for genetically modified crops even though I don't believe they pose a health hazard (for humans, anyway. The health of the environment, on the other hand... well, we don't know). For example, I can see how someone might not want to eat rice that included a pig protein, even if that pig protein means the rice is more nutritious or grows faster or whatever.
Cloned meat, on the other hand- what provokes the ick factor? It's not like we know the genetic composition or variation in our meat now, and a cloned cow will, for the moment, contain only cow DNA. Cloned farm animals is the next logical step in the industrialization of food, a process that's been going on for over 100 years with surprisingly little protest. [I think every American who eats meat should have to visit a slaughterhouse once in his or her lifetime, but that's just the hippie freak in me.] The trend has always been toward reducing variation in the name of reliability; I think raising animals with identical genes is no different from growing fields of wheat that produce identical flour. Granted, I don't like mass-produced flour (or meat), but I'm definitely in the minority, and it seems that consumer appreciation of factory foods should naturally extend to cloned livestock.
In tangentially related events, I'm slowly converting David to my way of grocery shopping without any sermons or demands. A couple weekends ago, we went to Eastern Market, which still has old-fashioned butchers, and he agreed that we should buy our grilling meats there. This past weekend, we bought fish at a seafood shop that smelled like the sea and had a much better selection than the supermarket. The shop also had a game: for $2, you could try to snag a live lobster with a robotic claw, like the arcade game where you try to get a stuffed animal for a buck.
Cloned meat, on the other hand- what provokes the ick factor? It's not like we know the genetic composition or variation in our meat now, and a cloned cow will, for the moment, contain only cow DNA. Cloned farm animals is the next logical step in the industrialization of food, a process that's been going on for over 100 years with surprisingly little protest. [I think every American who eats meat should have to visit a slaughterhouse once in his or her lifetime, but that's just the hippie freak in me.] The trend has always been toward reducing variation in the name of reliability; I think raising animals with identical genes is no different from growing fields of wheat that produce identical flour. Granted, I don't like mass-produced flour (or meat), but I'm definitely in the minority, and it seems that consumer appreciation of factory foods should naturally extend to cloned livestock.
In tangentially related events, I'm slowly converting David to my way of grocery shopping without any sermons or demands. A couple weekends ago, we went to Eastern Market, which still has old-fashioned butchers, and he agreed that we should buy our grilling meats there. This past weekend, we bought fish at a seafood shop that smelled like the sea and had a much better selection than the supermarket. The shop also had a game: for $2, you could try to snag a live lobster with a robotic claw, like the arcade game where you try to get a stuffed animal for a buck.
