Cloning Cows for Beef

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"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park



Produce from cloned cattle 'safe'


I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to clone cattle. It's not like there's any shortage of cows in the world, and even when the cow is cloned, you still need to raise it to adulthood, meaning you still need to feed it and have land for it to graze on. To me, it seems like a rather expensive way of procuring additional cows, and seeing as it is not the sci-fi version of cloning (where clones are instantly sprung out at full-grown adulthood), it seems rather wasteful.

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You'd want to use cloned cattle for the same reason you bother to breed cattle rather than letting them choose their own mates -- better cows. Here's a relevant quote from the article:

"Cloning offers the possibility of raising yields by copying especially productive animals or ones that are resistant to disease."

The upshot would be that instead of having to use Bob the uber-bull who provides 20% more meat as breeding stock, you could clone a thousand Bobs, then use them as a much, much bigger pool of breeding stock.

Ideally, cloning in this case would be a breeding "force multiplier" for especially desirable individuals.

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