10 Feb 2005
The Beef About Clones

By the gods, articles like this annoy me! It's the exact same syndrome that folks get with GMO veggies. As my daughter's band director used to say "I hear the clue phone ringing - will somebody please get it?"

While these folks are doodling about trying to figure out if a cloned steak will make your hair fall out, the carefully crafted work of a hundred generations is being undone, as intentional inbreeding destroys the traditional breeds and replaces them with grotesque monstrosities designed for human convenience.

Cloning is just carrying the practice of inbreeding to a new level - linebreeding on steroids. Here's a link to a paper on the subject from the University of Missouri. And if technical genetics bore you, here's the relevant part:

Development of highly productive inbred lines of domestic livestock is possible. To date, however, such attempts have met with little apparent success. Although occasional high performance animals are produced, inbreeding generally results in an overall reduction in performance. This reduction is manifested in many ways. The most obvious effects of inbreeding are poorer reproductive efficiency including higher mortality rates, lower growth rates and a higher frequency of hereditary abnormalities. This has been shown by numerous studies with cattle, horses, sheep, swine and laboratory animals.

So why do the big breeders continue to do it? In pursuit of the "ultimate" animal, of course, where the "ultimate" has nothing to do with the health or well-being of the animal, or any concern whatsoever for the genetic consequnces to the future of the species. Some producers have successfully used linebreeding to maintain a degree of genetic relationship in their animals to some outstanding ancestor or ancestors. Cloning the animal is the goal, although heretofore it's been merely metaphorical...

Where's Mary Shelley when we need her?

Los Angeles Times - Charlo, Mont. — After 30 years of raising cattle the old-fashioned way, Larry Coleman decided six years ago to plunk down $60,000 to clone the best Limousin breeding bull these parts had ever seen.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

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