We have taken a small step closer to “the future” and a giant leap away from a “natural” or “traditional” relationship with the animals that we feed upon. If you think that shrink-wrapped supermarket meat already separates you too much from the life, the animal and the death that created your juicy New York strip steak, you won’t like this latest dish.
On Jan. 15 the US Food and Drug Administration announced “meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals.” Though it still encourages companies to keep the products that come directly from the body of a cloned animal, they are fully endorsing the sale of products from any “traditionally” conceived animals that the clone may have parented.
And the US is not alone in this move. On Jan. 11 the European Food Safety Authority released a draft opinion on cloning that reads “food products obtained from healthy cattle and pig clones and their offspring” are similar to products from “conventionally bred animals” and can be marketed to consumers.
Livestock owners who applaud this move liken cloning to just a different sort of selective breeding. Instead of breeding an animal with desirable qualities and hoping you can keep the bloodline going and thus grow flocks and herds of plump, fast-growing, disease-resistant flesh, you can simply make exact genetic copies of the best breeding stock, using somatic cell nuclei transfer, and be almost guaranteed copious high-quality results.
What this means for your shopping basket is that you will be able to buy cheese, milk, steaks and processed meaty treats that are of the highest quality and best value because the consumption-bound animals are the “natural” offspring of a multitude of blue-blood clone breeders who have passed on their tastiest traits.
But this FDA decision will also certainly re-invigorate conspiracy theorists’ claims that somewhere some companies already have Matrix-like factories of chicken breasts growing in vats of synthetic amniotic fluid, plucked off when they reach 14 ounces and packaged for sale.
While that may seem unrealistic, the theory probably has its origins in the 1995 feat of University of Massachusetts’ Dr. Charles Vacanti. The Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine published a tribute to Dr. Vacanti in 2006, recalling the groundbreaking experiment when he manipulated cells to “produce tissue-engineered cartilage in the shape of a human ear on the back of an immuno-compromised nude mouse.” So sure, terrible/terrific things are possible.
And if we have or do develop processes to the point that we can grow cloned parts without the help of the non-desirable excess – a whole animal – we’ll have a new conundrum. On the one hand, there will logically no longer be the issue of animal cruelty in growing meat-for-food-and-skin, as a piece of flesh with no central nervous system to process stimuli can’t be considered a conscious being. But on the other hand, we will also have dismembered the system of what we understand to be the “natural” order for living creatures, whether you keep chickens as pets or like to munch on their tender flesh.
However, cloned meat, in any fashion, should not be allowed into our marketplaces because it is a move that helps shift the center-mass of our social and consumer inhibitions further away from a world in which the realities of death as part of life and killing as part of eating are visible and understood. Not only does it disrupt the utopian idea of the “golden age” of how we imagine life used to be, it also sets the stage for some new socio-political crossbreeding that could produce some strange offspring.
It just happens that also last week, here on campus, animal rights activist group PETA had some representatives go near naked in front of the EMU in protest of fur, and by extension, meat products and the supposed exploitation of animals. So, if we could grow just the finest cloned fur, would people still be able to protest that it is unethical treatment of an animal – no brain, no pain? But if PETA would protest cloned parts, or cloning at all, as a cruel disruption of “natural” animal lives, then they may have an ally in environmental activists or local-natural-foodists who advocate against genetic modification, cloning and other developments that may threaten more “natural” species or “traditional” relationships with food.
However, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk’s plans, which, according to her will, include having her own body dismembered and parts of it cooked or sent to those with whom she particularly disagrees, may be too extreme for “local food” people.
So while such a nexus may be unrealistic or unsustainable, other developments may create collaborations that are more long lasting. One of these, which have been gaining a lot of momentum in our area, is the work among forestry conservation advocates and climate change activists. As a product of the focus on climate issues, this cooperation seems to have staying power that a PETA-local food collaborative may not.
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