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1

Re: The Baghdad wood-chipper

Why don’t the troops just click their heels together and say the magic words “I’m gay?”

They’ll be back in Kansas in a New York minute.

Posted by Original Andrew | December 29, 2006 9:39 AM
2

From the movie Black Ceaser: Lyrics by James Brown (may he rest in funky peace)and this playing as his theme on the way to the hereafter.

THE BOSS

1-2-get down

Pay the cause to be the boss
Pay the cause to be the boss
Pay the cause to be the boss

Look at me
you know what you see,
you see a bad mutha
Look at me
you know what you see,
you see a bad mutha

Pay the cause to be the boss
Pay the cause to be the boss
Heh!
heh!told you so!
told you so!

Havin fun, fooling around
Havin fun, got money to boot

Cause pay the cause to be the boss X3
Caught,tracked
turned my back uhh!

Pay the cause to be the boss
Im a bad mutha
Im a bad mutha

Head for the turn around
Head for the turn around
told you so

Pay the cause to be the boss...

Posted by sputnik | December 29, 2006 9:42 AM
3

F.D.A. officials said that it was unlikely that labeling would be required because food from cloned animals is indistinguishable from other food . . .

Wouldn't that actually be a good argument for labeling?

Posted by Levislade | December 29, 2006 9:45 AM
4

@3 - absolutely. I've been on their mailing list for a few years and it's a great resource on this subject.

Posted by charles | December 29, 2006 10:01 AM
5

Isn't meat produced the old-fashioned way, like with natural reproduction, much cheaper? How is cloning in any way preferable?

Posted by keshmeshi | December 29, 2006 10:15 AM
6

@5: maybe at the moment it's cheaper, but once they streamline the process, and have a conveyer belt full of super-sized cattle and chickens, cloned meat will be far more profitable.

Posted by him | December 29, 2006 10:21 AM
7

I want my cloned Long-Pig, now damnit!

Posted by Spider Jerusalem | December 29, 2006 10:22 AM
8

As the article points out, cloning is only viable now when you're trying to breed (or continue to breed) some famous and/or extraordinary critter. Nobody's talking about raising animals through cloning for slaughter or milk, because of the cost.

However, I figure this gets us one step closer to the dream of cruelty-free veal grown in a lab. Mmm, vegan beef.

Posted by Nat | December 29, 2006 10:25 AM
9

Gag? What, do you refuse to eat meat from identical twins?

Posted by gfish | December 29, 2006 11:50 AM
10

Cloned animals are much weaker than regular animals; it's a challenge to even keep them alive. The animals for meat are going to be bred the old-fashioned way from the cloned ones. This allows them to get the genetic material of the preferred animal out to as many offspring as possible, assuming they can figure out how to make the cloning process quicker and more reliable. Right now it's not, not even close.

The push for cloning food animals is not coming from farmers, it's coming from biotech and ag business. I think it's actually a secret welfare program for struggling cloning labs; these are scientists run amok, not in the dystopian sense but in the fund-my-research sense.

It has absolutely no value or interest for consumers. There's not even a glimmer of a chance of it producing better food, because quality beef is about how you raise the cows, not the bloodlines. They know that putting labels on kills the whole program stone dead. No one is interested in this, certainly not the hystericals who fear it, or the dummies who think it's "fooling with Mother Nature", but seriously, not even the people who don't care are asking for it.

So, no labeling. Bush welfare for a worthless "science" sector that can't stand on its own but wants to be big business, while real science is shut down on every other front.

Keep an eye out for anti-stem-cell zealots promoting cloned beef; how hypocritical can you get?

Posted by Fnarf | December 29, 2006 11:54 AM

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