Cloned meat? 'Yuck factor' prevails
Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 27 December 2006
The Associated Press, among other news agencies, ran a story Thursday on the Food and Drug Administration's impending decision to approve meat and dairy products from animal clones for sale on American supermarket shelves.
Let's clarify: the products of concern include meat and milk from the offspring of a cloned mammal (for example, a clone of a cow yielding a lot of milk or a pig that fattens quickly).
Bloggers' early responses can be summed up by what professional ethicists call the "yuck factor." The consensus seems to be that eating the meat of animal clones would be viscerally revolting, for a variety of reasons.
Take some time and invest the food production industry. After some research you'll find out that products from cloned animals should be the least of your worries. Fields are overloaded with fertilizer, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides and whatever else. Animals are kept in factories and reduced to mere objects. Tons of food are thrown away every day, yet rotten meat lands in the shelves again. A cloned animal in the food chain is probably one of the safer links in that chain.