Craven Morehead

This is an interesting website, Cyclone Dairy | Perfect Cows. Perfect Milk

Having grown up on a dairy farm, I can understand the desire to clone top producing cows. I can't see that there would be any difference from drinking milk from the original cow or the cow that was cloned from it. But I'm sure this will be controversial once the product becomes more widely available.

So yes, I'd drink the milk. Why not?

What about you?

shesus

I would drink it. It can't be any worse than drinking milk from cows who have hormones injected in them. We eat cloned vegetables and fruits. According to a nut job I taught with once, milk has cancer in it so we're all going to die from drinking it anyway.

I can understand why people would refuse to drink it though. Science is scary and people often don't trust it. Plus, cloning is evil.

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JumpinJesus

These aren't clones that are zapped into existence by some nutty Scott Baio cloning contraption, are they?

From what I understand, the cloning process isn't nefarious in its process; it just creates a genetic twin. I'm no Scott Baio, so I can't say with any expertise what the dangers would be, but I wouldn't be opposed to drinking milk from a cloned cow. I wouldn't seek it out, either. I don't really drink milk as it is.

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Seaver

Right...

Wheat has been cloned since the Roman era. Barley/Hops/Rice has been cloned since the middle ages. All fruit bought since the first decade of the 20th Century is a clone.

God it's so scary people!

Honestly, cloning only means you don't have to worry about weird genetic things happening. You pretty much know exactly what you're going to get.

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fresnelly

Clones are just twins. No doubt the stock would be subject to the same rigorous agri-standards as the regular ones. IMHO, the safety of the milk is a separate issue from the ethics of cloning or factory farming.

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inBOIL

There are potential issues with milk from cloned cows, but they're so minor/unlikely that I wouldn't hesitate to drink it. Until there's credible evidence of a moderate or severe risk, all the frankenfood scaremongering is unjustified.

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Manic_Skafe

I wouldn't drink it. I've had too many allergic reactions to gmo veggies and meat. So long as there's an option, I'll always go organic.

I'll have my tomatoes sans frog genes and milk from cows that were made the ol' fashioned way.

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Willravel

Sure.

I'd also date Gwen Stacy.

dlish

who?

i would..i'd have the milk followed by the cow it came from

i'd eat almost anything

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snowy

This is an interesting question.

I eat clones all the time--bananas.

I'd prefer to drink milk from normal cows, if I had a choice. I doubt my local family-owned dairy is going to switch to cloned cows any time soon, so it's not something that's going to keep me up at night.

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Willravel

Gwen Stacy was the hot blond (cloned) girlfriend of Peter Parker in the Spiderman comics. She was a big part of the famous "Clone Saga". Basically, it was a massive nerd clone joke.
When do we find out of cloned meat is Kosher/Halal?

Leto

sheesh. You are a nerd!

But yes, I would drink such milk, why not??

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cdwonderful

cant be any worse than non dairy creamer
except those are cool cause you can light them on fire...

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Reese

I'd drink cloned milk from a 6 legged cloned alien cow from another planet if it was tasty and cheaper than regular milk.

I'm pro-cloning. I'd adopt a clone of myself if possible.

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Martian

I didn't need the explanation. Does that make me an equal or greater nerd?

I've always been a Mary Jane kinda guy anyway. Gwen Stacy was boring, unless we're talking the Ultimate version.

Also, I am throughly bored of all the non-organic FUD. I don't make a special effort to buy anything organic; in fact, since the non-organic stuff is usually cheaper, there's a good chance that everything we eat is mutant cancer food. Granted I haven't counted recently, but I'm reasonably sure that both Magpie and myself still have the regular number of toes.

And anyway, the term organic is stupid to begin with. Unless you're in the habit of eating rocks, everything you eat is organic. What difference does it make if it's fertilized with sodium nitrate or cow shit?

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Willravel

I thought she was more interesting because she chased Peter when he was just a nerd in high school, it's always represented to me a more innocent and simple time in Spider-man's history. She was his first love, and they seemed a match because they had a lot more in common than, say, Peter and MJ. I also really thought her death was brilliant writing.

CinnamonGirl

That's what I get for watching the movies instead of reading the comic books. I recognized the name, but missed the joke, since I didn't know she was a clone.


As for cloned milk... well, I don't drink cow's milk, so that isn't really an issue. I have to admit though, it creeps me out in a science fiction-y kind of way.

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levite

Cloned meat should be kosher as long as the animal is a kosher animal (split hoof, chews the cud) and as long as it is properly slaughtered by a trained kosher slaughterer (shochet) and soaked and salted according to the halakhah (Jewish law). There should be no difference whatsoever in terms of kashrut. I can only assume that the same would be true for Halal, since in general, the Muslim meat laws are less strict that the Jewish laws of kashrut.

I personally would have no problem either drinking milk from a cloned cow or eating meat from a cloned animal, so long as it was only cloned, and not genetically modified in any way. And that's both in terms of my own standards of what is and is not gross, and my understanding of kashrut. Because in terms of what is kosher, just cloning an animal should mean nothing. But when you end up with cows that glow in the dark, or sheep that produce squid ink, or goats with lobster claws instead of testicles and such, I'd have to doubt whether such creatures were kosher under the laws of kilayim, which forbid Jews from partaking of improperly hybridized combinations (no joke!! See Deut. 22:9-11 and Num. 19:19, plus a whole tractate of the Talmud dedicated to the resultant laws of kilayim and shaatnez).

Finally, for the record, I laughed at the Gwen Stacy joke. Probably a little too hard.

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spindles

I'm just waiting to be able to eat from the cow from the Restaurant at the end of the Universe.

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Willravel

My understanding is that the original intent of Kashrut is functional, to ensure that G-d's chosen people don't eat lower quality meat. The question, then would go to how that original intent transfers to an artificially created meat. I would assume it's halal and kosher, but I'm not as familiar with Judaism and Islam as I am with, say, Christianity.
Awesome. I figure a thread about cloning without a boinking joke that references a comic book is missing an integral ingredient.

FuglyStick

(More importantly, would you drink milk from cloned clowns?)

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CinnamonGirl

Don't even JOKE about that.

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levite

Nobody knows what the original intent of the laws of kashrut were. "Original intent" is kind of a strict-constructionist device that isn't quite transferable into the halakhic (Jewish legal) paradigm. What is relevant to interpretation (for the most part) is not what we guess might have been the original aim of the law, but how the law has been interpreted by the Rabbis of the Talmud, and how it has been interpreted over the past 2000 years. The parameters of something being kosher don't have to do with "quality" like an FDA grade, but simply with whether the animal is on the list of approved kosher animals, whether it was slaughtered in accordance with the laws of ritual slaughter, and whether it has been drained of all blood, in accordance with the law against eating blood.

There's just beginning to be a movement that says that other factors should be taken into account, although these tend not to be "meat quality" issues, and more about making sure the people working for the kosher butchers are not being mistreated and abused and cheated, like the recent shameful incident at the Rubashkin plant in Iowa.

BTW, ever since I started reading this thread, I totally have Weird Al's "I Think I'm a Clone Now" stuck in my head...!

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Willravel

I had no idea. So, kosher has to do with simply obeying G-d, then; a divine mystery. That being the case, cloned meat simply wouldn't be an issue then.

genuinegirly

I wouldn't personally gamble on starting a cloned cow diary farm. But I wouldn't bother to ask if my milk was from a cloned cow or a standard-bred cow.

I would consider it a gamble because I would be concerned about diminishing the gene pool and lack of diversity leading to issues with disease wiping out an entire herd quickly.

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Baraka_Guru

I'm more concerned about the welfare of the animals. Currently, success rates of cloning animals is quite low. They are improving however.

Cloning isn't the same as selective breeding.

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Grasshopper Green

As long as the cows weren't injected with BGH, sure, why not?

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Psycho Dad

Drink the milk
Eat the meat
Wear the hide

Tell me what else we can do with Bossy and I'll see if it can be crossed off the list.

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levite

Yeah, totally. For me, keeping kosher is the thing I just take a deep breath, and do it, and kinda say, "OK, God, I'm totally looking forward to the explanation on this, someday."

But cloned meat shouldn't be an issue.

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Absence, because it doth remove
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ametc

I wouldn't really mind. I don't mind what kind of cow it is.. at long as it's from California. Happy cows come from California.

blahblah454

I don't even drink milk from normal-no-cloned cows. So no, I would not drink it.

robot_parade

Ask a lonely Scotsman about all the uses for a sheep if you need more ideas...

dlish

will, levite basically summd it up really... cloned meat isnt really an issue when it comes to halal or kosher. from what i know and seen, the slaughter method is similar if not the same, and muslims are permitted to eat kosher meat, or any other meat (excluding pork of course) if the slaughter method complies with certain set protocols. so bring on the clones!

i myself am not as observant with the halal meat thing. theres halal butcheries in my area australia which id buy from, but if i went out and i wanted to eat out, then halal wasnt really a sticking issue for me.

here in the UAE nearly all meat is halal, so you dont really have to think about it much..its the same as any othr ordinary meat, and tastes the same...except halal.

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