make me a vessel for you.

Alex Koppelman  of Salon has this to say:

"In January, the Food and Drug Administration released a report concluding that food produced from cloned animals is as safe as food produced from ordinary animals, and decided against making the labeling of food from cloned animals mandatory."

I do hope we come to our senses with cloning. The importance of bio-diversity is paramount in our food supply. The prevalence of monoculture in agriculture, and industrial meat processing has been shown in countless studies to be the cause of a great many health problems and diseases. In fact, lack of diversity, and poor conditions are the cause for the cloning push. Animals are poorly treated, they get sick, they disrupt production. Cloned animals are less likely to get sick, as we can control their genetic structure, rendering all the animals being harvested equal in terms of treatment necessity. So, to avoid the problems of the lack of bio-diversity in a broken industrial system we will eliminate bio-diversity all together. We will clone our beasts, imposing cookie cutter strictures on nature, in the most fundamental way.

When the Organic movement began, and was actually organic, the founders assailed chemical/industrial farming practices, suggesting that we would eventually find these practices to be detrimental to human health and environmental health. Their theory was that these practices were unnatural, and therefore bankrupt. They in turn were pilloried by the establishment, as extremists, with no scientific evidence to back their claims. Their statements turned out to be correct, as we have seen with DDT, and many other toxins proudly lacing our food supply. Cancer incidence is skyrocketing, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, antibiotic-resistant strains of infectious bacteria, all these can be traced to the food supply. Cancer from toxins; obesity, heart disease and diabetes from the industry of Corn and Corn syrup, and the meat that it feeds, resistant bacteria from the antibiotics used on sickly livestock (who are sick due to poor treatment of course).
Using that simple bit of logic as our philosophical barometer, that unnatural = unhealthy, we can suggest similar things about cloned meats. Cloning is the opposite of natural in that it eliminates bio-diversity. The healthiest systems in nature are those that are most diverse: the old growth forest, or on the other end of the spectrum, the mixed race human being. More diversity equals healthier, heartier systems with more biomass per cubic foot of land. However, If we reduce bio-diversity we find unproductive land, sickly life forms, and eventually, no life at all.

This time we are reducing diversity to null via the genetic level. It is as if we are heading down an ever shrinking tunnel. Can the result possibly be a good one? Logically the answer is no. Scientifically the answer is unknown. At the moment, without long term testing, science cannot tell us one way or the other. But the american people need to be fed, and the agri-business needs to grow fiscally, so watch out my friends! Because the next time you buy a certified angus top round from the grocery store, it very well may be cloned, but you will have no way of knowing.

Be Well.