Cloned Meat and Its Place on The Dinner Table

Financial Obstacles

If cloned meat does go mainstream, its affects on society are not yet certain. For one thing, it currently costs between $13,000 and $17,000 to raise a cloned cow, compared with between $1500 and $3000 to raise a conventional cow, so cloning is not yet affordable to many farmers. Because of this it is likely that only the offspring of cloned animals will be sold as meat, instead of the cloned animals themselves. Another result of cloning would be the loss of genetic variation among livestock. As a result, disease could become devastating. For example, if all the livestock packed into a factory farm share almost identical DNA, a single bug making its way through can actually wipe out the entire population of that farm. Furthermore, many foreign countries ban genetically engineered food and crops. This could then seriously hurt U.S. exports, which would deliver a serious blow to our economy. Therefore, because of the high costs and consequences involved with cloning, it is likely that this technology will have a profound impact on society, although these impacts may not yet be fully known.

Cloning has vastly improved since 1951, and this technology has the potential to greatly alter our way of living. In regards to the consumption of cloned meat, especially beef, the approval of the FDA is just a small step forward on the bureaucratic hierarchy. Also, fears of the safety of eating cloned meat continue to put a damper on the proposed benefits of farmers cloning their best livestock. Because of these hurdles, consumers may not be eating cloned meat for perhaps decades. The world will be keeping a close eye on the cloning industry, and only the future can tell how we will be affected by the onslaught of the cloning industry.
ethic