Beef and Milk from Cloned Cattle

[Laksa]

The composition of milk and meat from cloned cattle is no different from those of the same products obtained from naturally reared animals, says a team of US and Japanese researchers.

Would you knowingly eat beef or drink milk from cloned cattle?

Link to article at nature.com

[NulloModo]

If it was tastier and/or cheaper than regular beef, of course.

If they could find a way to clone Wagyu cattle on the mega-farms for cheaper than they can raise the regular cows now, it could be a boon. Imagine, prime Wagyu beef strip steaks at $1.99 a lb or something... well, one can dream.

[touaregsand]

Although the beef from cloned bulls differed from that from non-cloned animals in certain parameters, including marbling and fatty acid composition, this is expected, the researchers say, because they were cloned from a superior bull with unusually high-quality characteristics. Overall, more than 90% of the parameters studied were the same as for non-cloned bulls, they add.

I wonder what these unusually high-quality characteristics are?

In answer to Laksa's question, I would not knowingly eat beef or drink milk from a cloned animal.

Does anyone know the reasons behind cloning cattle for consumption? I'm sure someone here does.

[carswell]

This Yahoo!/AP article on the same study includes some additional information. For example:

Two beef clones were studied that had been produced in Japan from a famous Japanese Black breeding bull with superior meat marbling traits.

The 10 dairy clones were produced at the University of Connecticut from a Holstein cow that produced a lot of milk.

Twelve animals (n=12) doesn't strike me as a particularly large sample size.

Not a proponent of bio-engineering in general, I have to say that genetic engineering spooks me more than cloning. Still, I'd avoid "cloned" milk, though less out of health fears than to support traditional agricultural practices.

Edited April 12, 2005 by carswell (log)

[therese]

Does anyone know the reasons behind cloning cattle for consumption? I'm sure someone here does.

←

Cloning removes much (but not all) of the crap shoot aspect of putting together an egg and a sperm and ending up with a desirable product. You might assume that if you start with a cow and a bull with certain traits you'd end up with calves that all shared those traits, but of course that's not the case at all: just because Mom produced a lot of milk and Dad had highly marbled meat is no guarantee that junior will do either.

So cloned animals would be more uniform, and once you'd selected for (or introduced) particular traits you could streamline the production. Of course, all your animals would be similarly vulnerable to environmental pressures like disease, but that's the chance the farmer takes.

There is, by the way, already considerable genetic manipulation of cattle herd composition using techniques that fall short of cloning.

[therese]

Some of the "desirable traits" that you might select for (that actually are selected for, when possible) have nothing to do with the quality of the meat or milk, but everything to do with production.

For instance, let's say you had two potential bulls for cloning, both fast growing animals that reach the same weight and produce the same degree of marbling at the same day of life while eating the same amount of food. But one of the calves weighed less than his competitor at birth by, say, 10%. Which animal is preferable?

Probably the smaller one, as the smaller calf is more likely to be survive its birth.

[jsolomon]

Probably the smaller one, as the smaller calf is more likely to be survive its birth.

←

Right argument, but slightly short on the discussion. The mother is less likely to be injured by giving weight to a smaller birth-weight calf.

Put me in the "I'd eat it" camp. I don't think there's much chance of it getting into the food supply in the next 15 years, though.

[scordelia]

There is, by the way, already considerable genetic manipulation of cattle herd composition using techniques that fall short of cloning.

←

Selective breeding and outright cloning are two entirely different animals.

Sure, with selective breeding, the farmer chooses the animals with the best traits he desires and breeds them to purify the strain of animal, but bio-diversity is maintained which helps an animal population resist environmental pressures and allows the possibility of new genetic mutations arise.

Cloning would create a population of identical animals. What do you if your DNA somehow becomes compromised? In China, botanists cultivate strains of natural or wild occurring rice for use indeveloping new rice strains or to shore up an existing strain that has become prone to disease from a lack of genetic diversity.

I would not buy cloned meat and I think it is better to work within the confines of nature. Hey, it's worked for billions of years! Why reinvent the wheel?

[jsolomon]

Selective breeding is a euphemism for inbreeding in as many cases as not.

Recall the breeding habits of human royalty have given us hemophilia.

Mutations will also still occur. Some will never be expressed, and some will lead to horrid consequences... for the individual animal. But the occasional one in the cloning stock, or outside of the cloning stock that increases the desirability of the "mutated" animal will quickly be grabbed onto as well. It is not a simple, easy system people use to choose animals and is fraught with more aesthetics than scientific principle (which in itself is an aesthetic, so we reduce the problem to an esoteric reason either way)

[scordelia]

Selective breeding is a euphemism for inbreeding in as many cases as not.

←

I do not disagree. That's why it so important to maintain stocks of heritage breeds. That's why I mentioned in my previous post the efforts of the Chinese to preserve natural rice strains.

Also, wouldn't cloning compound the problem since animals would be cloned from prevously inbred stock? Compounding the risk of disastrous mutations (hemophilia in humans is a perfect example) spreading thoughout an entire species?

And while many genetic mutations are harmful or just innocuous, some turn out to be very beneficial. A researcher at Berkley was working on an odd little mutation he found to be prevelant in people of European descent (this was a recent Nova episode). He surmised that it probably became more prevelant during the Black Death and offered some kind of natural resistance to the disease which he confirmed through experiments. But what he also found was that it also conveys a natural resistance to HIV and AIDS.

Do we really want to stop evolution in its tracks by cloning? Who knows what we might miss in the animal and plant kingdom?

[therese]

There is, by the way, already considerable genetic manipulation of cattle herd composition using techniques that fall short of cloning.

←

Selective breeding and outright cloning are two entirely different animals.

←

I'm well aware of the difference. Touaregsand had asked for an explanation of the (perceived) benefits, and I had explained some of them. That doesn't mean that I support the idea.

But there's actually nothing that prevents the cattle industry from producing both cloned and non-cloned herds, so genetic diversity (assuming we haven't backbred every last animal such that they're all so closely related that that's gone as well) could be maintained. In fact, the cloned animals could turn out to be infertile (was this tested?) or engineered to be so (likely an excellent idea from the agribusiness protection of patent point of view), such that there'd be no worries about their genes entering the pool.

[jsolomon]

I'm well aware of the difference. Touaregsand had asked for an explanation of the (perceived) benefits, and I had explained some of them. That doesn't mean that I support the idea.

But there's actually nothing that prevents the cattle industry from producing both cloned and non-cloned herds, so genetic diversity (assuming we haven't backbred every last animal such that they're all so closely related that that's gone as well) could be maintained. In fact, the cloned animals could turn out to be infertile (was this tested?) or engineered to be so (likely an excellent idea from the agribusiness protection of patent point of view), such that there'd be no worries about their genes entering the pool.

←

My apologies if I offended with something other than fact.

From the standpoint I have of being quite good friends with all size and luck of cattle producers, I believe there will always be some of both for a number of reasons. Some for "ethical" reasons, some for genetic history reasons, and some for financial reasons. I don't see cloning being something cheap and easily available even in the far short term (say 30 years for an arbitrary time).

I don't understand what you're saying about these cattle being engineered so their genes don't enter the gene pool. Genetic engineering (via shotgun methods) is pretty cheap, so any unscrupulous person could insert them no matter what.

[therese]

My apologies if I offended with something other than fact.

From the standpoint I have of being quite good friends with all size and luck of cattle producers, I believe there will always be some of both for a number of reasons.  Some for "ethical" reasons, some for genetic history reasons, and some for financial reasons.  I don't see cloning being something cheap and easily available even in the far short term (say 30 years for an arbitrary time).

I don't understand what you're saying about these cattle being engineered so their genes don't enter the gene pool.  Genetic engineering (via shotgun methods) is pretty cheap, so any unscrupulous person could insert them no matter what.

←

No offense, and in any case I was clarifying for scordelia (and don't mean to give offense in that quarter either).

My point about engineering the clones such that they would be infertile speaks to the problems we're seeing with engineered/recombinant (but fertile) plants, in which genes from these plants are being introduced into the natural gene pool for the animals. So an (infertile) cloned bull would be a one off, and if it happened to harbor a gene that made cattle susceptible to a newly mutated virus at some point in the future there'd be no problem with it having entered the natural gene pool.

There'd also be no question of the patent owner having to worry about somebody crossing their incredibly great bull with a cow and getting progeny with similar traits and possibly thereby avoiding payment of royalties. Unless, of course, some scurrilous sort happened to know the insertion site of the infertility gene and yanked it back out, or inserted some sort of silencer or...

As for whether or not the technique will ever be financially or technically feasible, well, we won't know until it is, will we? And there are people working very hard to make it happen.

[Pan]

Given the low percentage of successfully-cloned animals vs. those that had to be destroyed and the sped-up aging process that's been observed in cloned sheep, e.g., I would not want to do anything to support cloning of animals. Where cloning has been really successful is at the unicellular level.

[NulloModo]

First attempts are always going to have low success-rates. If we stop now just because lots of the animals we are cloning are dying, we may never get all of the tricks down. Engineering cloned animals to be sterile does seem like a very good idea from a disease prevention point of view.

With regards to missing out on evolution via cloning, I think that the opposite is true, we could accelerate it, and only introduce the traits we wanted. As our understanding of manipulating and engineering the genome increases we could insure that every cloned cow had a perfect immune system, was made of 100% prime grade beef, and matured to slaughtering age in a fraction of the time it takes now. Heck, I'm sure it could even be possible to engineer them to have certain muscle groups be larger than they are on traditional cattle, just as chickens have been engineered through breeding to have larger breasts.

As far as milk goes, we could get cattle that give milk with extra high percentages of milk-fat, just think of the great possibilities for artisinal cheese making.

I think genetic engineering has just gotten such a bad wrap from hollywood and extremist activist groups that people are afraid of it for no good reason. Every major evolution in human society has been sparked by a discovery or a new technology that seemed scary or uncontrollable before it became commonplace. We can now see the world at the cellular and sub-cellular level, and are understanding it more every day. Controlling it at that level seems like a logical next step.

[therese]

I'm not so sanguine about the all good/no bad potential here, particularly when profit will be the primary motive for food producers.

But it will be interesting to see what happens down the road.

[Pan]

I would also note that splitting the atom -- certainly not an indisputably positive development -- was also a big advance in technology. I would think that after all the horror of the 20th century, we'd be beyond a belief in the inevitability of Progress and a blind faith in the positive value of technology. Human nature hasn't improved with advances in technology, and the Law of Unintended Consequences is no fiction, for both good and ill. And if it's possible for customers to use their wallets to slow or stop some technological advances they're suspicious of, why not?

[NulloModo]

True, fission has led to some horrors as well as some wonders, but personally I'd say that the benefits outweigh the bad things with have done.

I'm sure that disasters relating to cloning are certainly possible, even likely. However, we will learn from our mistakes and move on. If some people want to use their wallets to drag their feet, then by all means, that is their prerogative. I personally take solace in the fact that the major corporations would have a lot to gain from something like this, and that their pockets are much, much deeper than those of the activists.

[BCinBC]

The challenge is where to draw the line between which “technological” advance to support and which one not to because, as you folks have pointed out, even “natural” modern breeding involves human (and mechanical) interaction.

Today we (can) eat engineered vegetables. The rationale is, who cares? A tomato is a tomato. Looks the same, feels the same, tastes the same. And if you can grow them with increasing yields, what the hell! Feed the world! Someday, when financially viable, the government will officially rule on the safety of cloned meat, and we actually will be faced with the same choice.

NulloModo, I’m imagining somewhere in the future when cloned meat is so cheap and available that the backlash occurs and wealthy people actually pay a premium for “natural” (or “organic”?) steak.

Diner: I think I’ll have the 8 oz Filet. Now this is the real stuff, right?

Waitron: Of course, Sir, we would never dream of serving Kobe v3.0 here! Now of course the steak comes with organic gorgonzola, but would you care for an organic baked potato on the side? We just received a shipment, and are offering them tonight for only $70. Organic fixings extra, of course.

[Daddy-A]

True, fission has led to some horrors as well as some wonders, but personally I'd say that the benefits outweigh the bad things with have done.

My head hurts. Seriously, I have a huge bruise on my forehead from smashing it against my desk after reading this tripe!

The benefits from nuclear fission outweigh the drawbacks? I'm sure the folks who "survived" Horoshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl might disagree with you. But hey, I'm sure they're relieved that 20% of the world gets cheap electricity. We make mistakes and learn from them right?

If some people want to use their wallets to drag their feet, then by all means, that is their prerogative. I personally take solace in the fact that the major corporations would have a lot to gain from something like this, and that their pockets are much, much deeper than those of the activists.

Give me a foot-dragger over a profit taker anyday. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which one has the best interest of the human race at heart.

A.

Edited April 15, 2005 by Daddy-A (log)

[NulloModo]

True, fission has led to some horrors as well as some wonders, but personally I'd say that the benefits outweigh the bad things with have done.

My head hurts. Seriously, I have a huge bruise on my forehead from smashing it against my desk after reading this tripe!

The benefits from nuclear fission outweigh the drawbacks? I'm sure the folks who "survived" Horoshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl might disagree with you. But hey, I'm sure they're relieved that 20% of the world gets cheap electricity. We make mistakes and learn from them right?

If some people want to use their wallets to drag their feet, then by all means, that is their prerogative. I personally take solace in the fact that the major corporations would have a lot to gain from something like this, and that their pockets are much, much deeper than those of the activists.

Give me a foot-dragger over a profit taker anyday. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which one has the best interest of the human race at heart.

A.

←

Cheap electricity is only part of it. Despite the difficulties in disposing of nuclear waste, Fission plants are far better for the environment than coal burning plants, and hydroelectric/dam-based plants are nowhere near capable of carrying this country's electricity needs at the moment. And sure, lots of people died from use of the a-bomb, but since then the threat of M.A.D. has effectively neutralized massive major power conflicts, something has to be said for that, but that is probably a topic for another board.

As for the latter comment: poverty is still the #1 reason of premature death across the world. If cloned foodstuffs could mean enough cheap food to feed the needy worldwide, how can that be a bad thing? Even if the donations were just for PR or tax-writeoffs helping people is helping people, regardless of the motivation.

[Behemoth]

As for the latter comment:  poverty is still the #1 reason of premature death across the world.  If cloned foodstuffs could mean enough cheap food to feed the needy worldwide, how can that be a bad thing?  Even if the donations were just for PR or tax-writeoffs helping people is helping people, regardless of the motivation.

←

I almost became an economist because of Amartya Sen. But I like abstractions much more than reality. Anyway, here is a Wikipedia link.

Edited April 16, 2005 by Behemoth (log)

[touaregsand]

As for the latter comment: poverty is still the #1 reason of premature death across the world. If cloned foodstuffs could mean enough cheap food to feed the needy worldwide, how can that be a bad thing? Even if the donations were just for PR or tax-writeoffs helping people is helping people, regardless of the motivation.

I see what your saying Nullo...

BUT...

Feeding the world is a matter of distribution that isn't hindered or stalled by politics. There is enough food already to "feed the world".