01/31/08 Cloning.... A Dead End

Most Americans couldn't care less whether their meat is cloned, just make sure that hamburger's medium rare. As long as the Food and Drug Administration gives a wink and a nod to cloned dairy products and meat, no worries&right? But I have a problem with cloning any animal . It bothers me immensely that China has cloned neon green pigs and no thank you, I don't want all my beef cattle looking alike. You see I respect the heritage of our farm animals one resulting from generations of yes& human intervention called breeding . Yet this "meddling" with species celebrated diversity not simply efficiency. Verlyn Kinkenborg pointed out in a recent NYT Op-Ed piece that while seed banks exist to preserve plants, when a breed of sheep is gone it's genetic archive forever vanishes . He went on to call cloning a "colossal waste of genes and of truly lovely productive animals." And wrote poignantly that "from one perspective, (one I might add apparently neither of us shares,) a cloned animal looks like a miracle of science but from another, it looks like what it really is: a dead end."