Ellen, in Europe this argument comes up regularly as thinley veiled anti-semitism. PETA is another group which attacks all meat eating and has produce doctored films of kosher slaughter.

During kosher slaughter, the animal becomes unconcious in a fraction of a second, because the first artery cut drops the blood pressure/flow to the brain. Although there is a second artery in many animals, in the animals designated by G-d as Kosher (cows, sheep, goats, deer) the second artery cuts over and connects to the other so blood pressure drops instantly in both, whereas in non-kosher animals the arteries do not connect and there is not this effect. The slaughtering knife has to be razor sharp, without even a tiny nick which could catch and cause pain to the animal and the slaughtering must be done with one cut.

Some countries require stunning the animal before slaughter, which does not remove the pain of their slaughter methods (which may involve hitting the animal with a hammer or driving a nail into its skull), but rather makes the animal not appear to not be suffering (think of the kind of anesthesia where the patient can feel everything but can't respond). This is not allowed under kosher laws. Since kosher slaughter causes instant unconciousness, the animal may twitch or thrash as an automatic nerve response, but does not feel pain. I should mention that halal meat is slaughtered in a similar way which is why some of my muslim friends will eat kosher meat when halal is not available and in some places will work together with the shochet (slaughterer) to produce meat acceptable under both sets of religious laws.

Welcome to the thread, Ellenr.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I sure understand where you are coming from. I too am extremely concerned and appalled at what is going on in slaughter houses in America, and think it borders on torture.

The Europeans are addressing the issue of humane slaughterhouse practices much more extensively. In chickens, they are employing a method that quickly increases the nitrogen and reduces the oxygen in the air, renduring the animal fully unconscious in a matter of seconds, and it is much more humane. I read an article about it just last week, but would have to hunt for the link. If I can find it again, I'll post it later today.

I know many vegetarians that believe that because they don't eat meat, they are "saving an animal." And while I appreciate that position, I disagree. I think if we did not eat beef, pork, and chicken, (etc.) these animals would rapidly join the ranks on the endangered speicies list. These are domesticated animals; they have few survival instincts, and if we did not feed them and take care of them, I think they would die out in a big hurry.

But just because we eat some of them, doesn't mean that we have to treat them in such deplorable ways. When I was a kid growing up on a farm, I learned to love these creatures. They are not dumb, in fact, many of them have quite delightful personalities.

I would personally like to drive the CAFOs right out of business. In fact, I'd like to lock those SOBs up for 24 hours and treat them just like they treat the chickens, cows and pigs. There are moments when I virtually seethe over this thing.

I am extremely angry about the way they treat animals; and in that respect, even though I still eat some meat, I do understand precisely why so many people have become vegetarian.

Garden Dmpls, please forgive me, but where did a thread on cloned animals make a turn to E Coli? BTW, E Coli exists in all animals. It is a bateria in the colon (hence the name) that helps break down food to derive the maximum benefit to the animal. But every species has a different strain of E Coli. In fact there are very few strains that are dangerous to humans. and with the one exception of O 157:H 7, all of the dangerous strain belong in the colons of carnivores or omnivores.

E. coli came up on 1/19 at 4:48 when Ms. Eco Pie said

quote:

We need to demand uncloned, grass-fed organic beef from the grocery stores and not just because of the cloning factor either. They just recalled 5.7 MILLION pounds of hamburger not too long ago because of E.coli. Do you know how many beef animals that was? E. coli is 300 times more likely to exist in beef animals from feed lots, where they are fattened on corn and grain. (Check out E.coli on Wickipedia) A Cows' digestive system is not made to eat corn and grain; they get lesions and abscesses in their stomachs and intestines from it which results in E.coli, and this is the reason beef animals fattened for market are fed a steady diet of antibiotics. Grass fed animals are 300 times less likely to carry E.coli.

It went on from there, which is what makes discussions interesting- somewhat relevant digressions. They take our minds to places we hadn't planned on visiting, but which are interesting and invigorating, none the less.

Bill, I think E.coli O 157:H 7 absolutely is specific to the conversation about cloned animals, particularly beef and dairy animals

This particular and deadly strain of E.coli uses cattle as its primary host. When you clone animals that have no resistance to this pathogen and, as the evidence suggests, use other techniques like invitro fertilization to create masive numbers of progeny from that clone for the beef or dairy market, I think we are playing with disaster.

The beef industry would be cloning animals specific to fast weight gain in feedlots. The dairy industry clones for more milk. Both animal types are typically fed corn and grain by the industry. E.coli O 157:H 7 thrives in the stomachs of animals fed corn and grain, and has mutated so that the pathogen can withstand stomach acids including the stomach acids of human beings.

While the industry may see cloning as little more than a way to rapidly produce animals, the animals they are producing through genetic manipulation have no resistance to the disease.

I grew up breeding animals for specific traits. While weight gain and milk production were certainly traits one would wish to breed for, disease resistance would have also been a primary goal.

They are cloning animals that have no resistance to a deadly strain of E.coli. The reason those animals are fed antibiotics is because they have E.coli living in the leisons growing in their guts.

In contrast, I would be breeding for fast weight gain or high milk production showing in grass fed animals in the attempt to produce a market strain that did not play host to E.coli O 157:H 7.

Technically cloning is a way to speed up the breeding process, but they are cloning and breeding for traits based upon market parameters only. Cloning for weight gain in feed lot beef, or milk production in grain fed dairy means more meat and milk with E.coli O 157:H 7.

Human beings have no resistance to it and the pathogen is becoming antibiotic resistant.

To do this borders on lunacy.

Beefalo, by the way, which are 3/8 buffalo and 5/8 beef show remarkable weight gains on grass only. Furthermore, this type of animal thrives on switchgrass and other prarie grasses, which means they can graze on grasses raised for ethonol bio-fuel.

Since we already know that these biomass grasses hold more promise than corn for ethanol production, grass fed beefalo that show high weight gains on prairie grasses means we could be solving several problems at once.

What's stopping that? Corn subsidies?

I can just about guarantee you Bill, that if you traced the paper trails of who owns the cattle cloning companies, you will find the same people who are raking in the big bucks from corn subsidies.

Follow the money trail...

Now, how would you feel if they cloned beefalo which carried the traits you mentioned. Where is that devil emoticon when I need it???

That's a fair question...

I would not feel good about it at all; not only for ethical and philosophical reasons, but because I think it would be a very poor step to take in terms of genetic diversity. If they began cloning beefalo, the diversity of that gene pool would be compromised, and unfortunately controlled by the same handful of corporations that have taken over the beef industry.

People do not spend 25K to clone an animal and then breed it. That animal is too expensive to take the chance of breeding it by sexual means, not only because complications at birth could kill the animal, but because the gestation period in beef is 9 months. For beef animals, the goal is a 12-month calving interval. The average cow will stay productive in a breeding herd for 7 to 9 years if no disease or physical problems develop. Obviously, since cloning is a realtively new proceedure, there could not be so many progeny of cloned animals on the market today, so many that they "have lost track of them" unless the cattle cloning companies were regularly engaged in the practice of harvesting eggs from the cloned animal, fertilizing them asexually and planting the egg invitro in less expensive surrogate animals. That practice is going to rapidly result in a loss of diversity in the gene pool of beef animals.

The same loss of genetic diversity would obviously occur if the same practice were applied to beefalo.

The money angle also plays a big role in all of this. Presently at least 80% of the beef slaughter market is completely controlled by only four huge corporations. If you don't think corporations like Monsanto, who are genetically engineering corn, also have a huge stake in the beef industry, think again. It's all interrelated. Corn, ethanol, and the beef industry form a symbiotic relationship. Of course the corporations involved will also be interrelated and owned by the same individuals. In fact, were we, the public, capable of tracing the paper trails through the system of corporate veils, I am reasonably sure that the same group of wealthy and powerful individuals that finances corporations like Monsanto also has a high financial stake in the cattle cloning companies.

Throughout my life, I have watched these same huge, faceless agro-corporations take over the land on a massive scale, and with them have come the complete degradation of our soil and water table. Not only are these huge agro-corporations not good caretakers of the earth, they treat animals as if they were little more than machinery. Furthermore, those same corporations have been utterly ruthless in their methods of driving the family farmer off of his land.

Do we really want people like this controlling our land, bio fuels and the entire food industry? If we allow them to go forward, I can guarantee you, they will hold far more control over society than the oil companies ever did.

I would have precisely the same objections to the cloning of beefalo as I do beef or dairy animals because it places the control of our food in the hands of a few.

quote:

"Food is power. You can use it to control nations" – Henry Kissinger

Just how badly do you want to be completely controlled?

"The clear divergence suggests that cloned foods will indeed be introduced to U.S. consumers in the near future. THE FDA HAS SAID THAT IT WILL CONSIDER ONLY SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS IN ITS DECISION, WHILE POPULAR OPINION AND EMOTIONAL APPEALS WILL CARRY NO WEIGHT. While there are a handful of comments that make some science-based points against cloning, there is surprisingly little in the public comments that is likely to outweigh the FDA's inclination to proceed with cloned foods." http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3462

I must admit, I have for years questioned the integrity and the reliability of the FDA and their currant position only supports that opinion. Whether it is dangerous or ineffective pharmaceutical drugs or the advent of cloned animals and their progeny entering the food chain, the FDA obviously does not have the consumers' best interests at heart.

Considering only scientific opinion is a very iffy proposition. As the six o'clock news regularly confirms, laboratories apparently lie, withhold tests that produced negative outcomes from scientific journals, and manipulate statistics to back their claims. Inevitably, every scientific lab in the country is in it for the money, and the so called "science" presented by labs operating to produce cloned animals is no different from the science coming from labs producing the drugs and pharmaceuticals inevitably approved by the FDA only to be found either dangerous or ineffective at a later date. It is ultimately the consumer that ends up paying the price.

Did the FDA pay attention to the following report? Apparently not…

"New studies find the immune systems of young cloned pigs do not fight disease as effectively as those of regular pigs.

The research was conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Missouri.

The scientists gave a naturally occurring toxin to seven young, cloned pigs and 11 genetically similar, non-cloned pigs. The cloned pigs' immune system did not produce sufficient quantities of natural proteins called cytokines, which fight infections.

As newborns, both the cloned and non-cloned pigs received some disease protection through their consumption of colostrum, a natural substance passed to a newborn pig via its mother's milk. The colostrum helps protect the young animal until its own immune system begins to function.

Cloned pigs, as well as cloned cows, have been known to have a higher-than-normal number of deaths around the time of birth. Many die from bacterial infections, the scientists said.

The cloned pigs are being used only for research purposes and won't be used for human consumption, the scientists noted." http://www.livescience.com/animals/041104_cloned_pigs.html

Book- Your Right to Know-

"Are you shopping in the dark? Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food provides a comprehensive and up-to-the-minute guide on the very real dangers genetically engineered foods present to our health, the environment, and farm communities. Written by Andrew Kimbrell with a foreword by Nell Newman, this book provides you with all the necessary tools to understand this critical food issue, to choose to avoid GE foods and to become an active participant in the fight for an organic, environmentally sustainable and socially just food future."


-ellen

Here's the story of a one cloned pig named Mohican…

"Mohican, named after the action-romance flick Last of the Mohicans because he was the only one to survive when his mother accidentally sat on and crushed the rest of his litter, was talented enough for a sequel. In 1998, Earnhart cut off a piece of Mohican's ear and had it frozen. Four years later he called up ViaGen and ordered a four-hog tribe expansion. He didn't tell other farmers, for fear of being seen as some city-boy elitist. "This is not a fancy operation," he says, shrugging. "By no means."

Within weeks of delivery in September 2002, the first piglet got sick and died. Another dropped dead two months later. A few days before Christmas, Earnhart walked into his heated barn at feeding time and spotted his last two piglets belly-up in the straw. The cause of death was apparently their identical, adult- size ulcers. "I felt sick, " Earnhart says. "I thought maybe someone was telling us we shouldn't have done this." ViaGen promised to ship replacements, but Earnhart says he was told that two more litters had died at the lab.
The demise of the Mohicans may have resulted from a well-known, poorly understood side effect of somatic-cell nuclear transfer called sudden death syndrome. Genes from adult progenitor animals sometimes manifest themselves too early in their clones; Mohican might have had hereditary ulcers that his piglet doppelgangers developed prematurely. Earnhart won't speculate — the reasons don't really matter to him. "It just nearly killed us," he says.

Problems like sudden death syndrome are why the Humane Society, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Center for Food Safety have asked the FDA to ban cloning or mandate "clone-free" labels at supermarkets. According to the FDA's risk assessment, many animals created with the SCNT process have an "increased risk of adverse health outcomes" over other animals born via assisted reproductive technologies. Clones also suffer from large offspring syndrome, meaning they grow dangerously fast inside their surrogate mothers.

According to Jaydee Hanson, a policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, those mysterious disorders point to the real question holding clones back: What if? What if clones become ubiquitous and then turn out to be preferentially vulnerable to some emerging disease? And what if eating those clones makes people sick, too? "They need to look at multi generational studies of these animals to see what happens as they breed," Hanson says." http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/15-11/ff_clonedmeat?currentPage=6

Hi ms Eco Pie,
welcome to you too. I haven't seen you here before. You certainly bring a welcome, thoughtful point of view.
I'm not a vegetarian.
I come at the issue from another angle:
I reject the assumption that humans are superior to all other forms of life. I reject that everything on earth including earth is here to be used by humans.

For example, someone on the OG forum once made a comment in response to my posting of a Bill Maher article on the horrors of turkey farming.
The comment was to the effect that turkeys are stupid birds and the only reason they exist is so that humans can eat them!

I prize that comment and quote it often, because it about as idiotic and arrogant as I have ever heard.
Imagine thinking that an animal was created so that humans could eat it. As if the turkey is not the end result of an evolutionary process designed to produce - a turkey.

It is the arrogance of humans and this assumption of human superiority that has produced the ecological catastrophe we are now seeing. We are the only living being that spreads all over the planet. Other living species had a niche that they belonged to. Humans were so "smart" that they could learn to adapt to any environment. Result? Environmental ruin.

We destroy the habits of living creatures which lived in ecological harmony for millenia. We release new and deadly zoonotic diseases because of our spreading habitat. We are destroying the rain forest, the home of uncountable species of plants and animals, and the home of remedies for our illnesses.

We ruin our own organs by our own lifestyle, then torture millions of animals to provide replacement organs.

Superior? I don't think so.

For more than 99% of the existence of homo sapiens on the earth, we lived as biological animals: we were guided by the sun, by the seasons, we were nomadic, we lived within the weave of life.

However, once we developed technology we used it, never asking, 'Is this good?' 'Is this right?" 'Is this moral?'

Now we have war and pestilence and parents who throw their children off a bridge, one by one...plunk..plunk..plunk..plunk.

We all know something is terribly wrong, but we cannot find out what it is, because we do not look at where we came from.

ellen

Being that farmers raise animals for profit (although they may do so because they love farming, without profit, they would be out of business), I would not worry about cloning to increase the number of animals if many of the resulting animals are not viable. The shortened life span and other problems come from using adult cells. The natural offspring of clones, produced from eggs and sperm probably wouldn't have these problems. I am curious to know if these same problems are caused by splitting the cells of an early stage embryo (which is more akin to forming twins or quadruplets than cloning an adult cell).

Thank you, Ellen, for your kind words. I truly appreciate your thoughts and think you've made some extraordinarily valid points. And please call me Katie.

However, I grew up on a small family farm, around 300 acres, and never once did I feel superior to the nature around me. This superior attitude surely exists today, but it comes more from huge corporate conglomerates who have, unfortunately, taken over the food chain, rather than small farmers or homesteaders that have a few acres and attempt to raise most of their own food.

When one's primary goal is raising food to put on the family dinner table, people pay much closer attention to the health of the soil and the happiness and welfare of their animals. When one's primary goal is making a ton of money, the priorities very evidently change.

It's hard for me to relate to the superior attitude you speak of, but then I've slept in a barn next to a cow having a difficult birth so that I could be there when she needed help. I've walked miles through cold downpours in order to collect all the newborn lambs born that day and coax their mothers to follow, because they needed to be sheltered, or the lambs would die.

It never occurred to me once that I was superior, only that I had a personal responsibility to take care of the animals that were ultimately taking care of me and providing my family with sustenance.

I learned in childhood to see myself as "a part of" the earth, rather than "apart from" the earth, and therein perhaps lies my philosophy.

Unfortunately, I think the superior attitude people have towards the natural world is probably pandemic in today's society. But a huge number of people have been forced off the land, live in the cities and suburbs now and they have utterly lost any instinct to be close to the earth. Too many people see Mother Nature as an enemy to be controlled, rather than a friend to work in unison with.

People who don't get their hands dirty digging in the soil, or caring for animals simply loose their abilities to relate to the planet and the environment around us. And once that happens, I agree, a "superior" attitude sets in.

I think the only answer is a complete rethinking of the way we develop our social systems. We need to develop organic, sustainable living systems designed to work with the nature system, rather than against it, and until we do that, I fear this superior attitude will be dominant in society.

Obviously, it's killing the earth…

quote:

We are the only living being that spreads all over the planet.

Oh Yeah? Well how about roaches? Huh, Huh!

quote:

]" Imagine thinking that an animal was created so that humans could eat it. As if the turkey is not the end result of an evolutionary process designed to produce - a turkey."

I must add though that, historically, I doubt seriously if people began eating meat out of a sense of superiority. One of my past times is archaeology and ancient history, and I am reasonably well read in that department. From the looks of things, prior to the last ice age, our human ancestors did not eat meat, or if they did, it was on rare occasion.

That changed with the coming of the ice age as millions of plants formally consumed as food died off in severe cold conditions. Animals survived by finding the tough forage plants that did grow and make it in freezing cold, but our bodies were not suited to digest most of those plants. To this day we cannot digest cellulose fiber plants like grass. I don't think human beings began eating meat out of superiority; I think they did so out of absolute necessity. We began eating animals because they were the only food available to us, and once we began eating meat, we learned to like it.

We too, are a product of our own evolution, but inevitably climate change has played an extraordinarily important role in deciding how human beings had to adapt in order to survive.