ah thank you R_I, i did not know that.

sigmund your post made me laugh out loud! ;)

i_p, i think there is an organic spam farm somewhere around baldwin. :)

friday friday friDAY, friday friday friDAY!

i'm all about that cheap sweet sweet lovin' there, werekoala! :)

friday friday friDAY, friday friday friDAY!

the coney?? is that like the foot long chili dogs from the sonic, R_I? ;)

i'm with taylor, i'll eat just dang near anything that doesn't eat me first.

ooo that didn't come out quite right. heh.

friday friday friDAY, friday friday friDAY!!!! :)

gootsie...hahahahaha!

If today's poll (up top) is an accurate representation, then 50% of Lawrence tries only to eat organically grown, local food. I think not! I don't think that 50% of Lawrence strolls through the farmer's market or crowds up the Merc's parking lot. Just mao.

Me? Dunno. I have no problem in the plant gmo world but my animal cloning jury is still out.

RI, I think the Bible said specifically that we were not to eat cloves...especially in spaghetti sauce. (However, they are tastey in a pumpkin pie.)

I'm just trying to understand why anyone would go to the expense and hassle of cloning an animal for FOOD -- isn't it much cheaper to just get a male and female of the species together with some mood lighting and Barry White?

Only reason I can think of is along the lines of experimental tests - by having the experiment and control groups genetically identical, you can minimize the effect of genetic predispositions on the outcome. Well, that and selective breeding programs. And rich people could clone their pets.

But for general commercial use, I think sweet, sweet loving will always be cheaper.

I'm in favor of the sweet lovin'. Cloning has GOT to be more expensive than the good ol' fashion way. Besides, shouldn't the poor beasties get a FEW Moments of joy before they go to that big Buffet Line in the Sky?

Speaking of more expensive - does anyone have an idea when bacon became a luxury food? I used to buy it cuz it was cheap and now it's about 3.50 a pound. Must be the cloned hogs...

I_P... magic bucket!!!!

I probably would eat it. Chances are it won't be a separate menu item at restaraunts. We will all eat it and can't do anything about it.

Probably not.

Cloned animals strike me as a 'corporate farm' likelihood, but not so much something you'd see the local Farmer Joe doing.

I do try to eat locally or regionally raised organic hormone-free stuff, which is made easier here by the Whole Foods flagship store ten minutes from my house. I miss the Lawrence Farmers' Market (and the fact that it was two minutes' walk from Wheatfield's!), but I like more having a grocery-store sized selection of ethical meat choices.

I'm curious about ol' Karen's answer. Why prefer grain-fed over grass-fed? Grain-fed still allows for the animals to have spent their entire lives in a feedlot, crammed in like sardines. I tend to look for as many of the following words as possible: Grass-fed, natural, organic, free range, hormone-free, no megadoses of antibiotics. I suppose that if I found a package of organic, free range grass fed, hormone-free beef from a cloned cow that had had no megadoses of antibiotics (I'm not averse to animals being treated for actual diseases, just to them being given massive doses of antibiotics when they're not sick), I could eat it with a clear conscience, but the fact is that I don't really think I'll see that package of beef anytime soon.

Cloning will most likely be for the mass-produced meats, and other ethical choices usually get left by the wayside for mass-production that keep me from buying it.

Soylent Green is people!

I hate to break it to Chris Brown, but the FDA is not responsible for our good nutrition. It's supposed to make sure something won't kill us, not that it'll actually be good for us. It's not the same thing.

Anyway, if it's actually meat, then whatever. Like the bumper sticker says: "I love animals. They taste great!"

Karen Matheis has it right. A cloned animal simply has the genetic makeup of its genetic donor, nothing more.

Of much more concern to human health are things that are currently done in livestock production, such as rampant antibiotic use and steroid injections not to mention using corn to feed cattle.

The reaction to the word "clone" is interesting, and it shows the kinship of religious fundamentalists and PETA animal-rights activists. Both use "clone" as a scare word, and both are driven by untenable dogma and ideology.

Yeah, I could see it as an accellerated version of selective breeding.

Say you've got a male and female cow with the genes to produce 100 more pounds of meat than the norm. You could harvest them for sperm and eggs, and then implant those zygotes into normal cows. We do this sort of thing right now. Having clones of that original male and female would just accelerate the process, but I'm not sure how cheap that would be versus just spending a few more years breeding the lines back and forth. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about replication errors, etc.

Fact is, outside of person-specific medicine, or certain research, I really can't see much practical benefit to cloning. And I certainly don't understand the hysteria behind it.

I once worked with a very nice lady who was opposed to cloning. The funny thing was, she had an identical twin. She seemed offended when I pointed out that a twin is just a naturally occuring clone.

Personally, I would not eat cloned animals,

but conversely, it's all my clone will eat!

hah, bone that was funny! :p

friday friday friDAY! friday friday friDAY! c'mon gootsie this conga line is lookin' kind of sorry! :D

...and while I digress, may I say that if that Nutrisystem commercial with the gal with the incredibly annoying voice say "Look at me, I'm a size 2!" again and the "I'm a chocloholic" line, I will go craaaazy!

I also think the Dominos "fudgeum's" ads are gross and quite creepy...and any ad for medical products, why do I need to know what ALL of the side effects are right then? Shouldn't my doctor and pharmacist be handling that?

Okay, I feel better...(happyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplacehappyplace)

"Say you've got a male and female cow with the genes to produce 100 more pounds of meat than the norm."

Does this look funny to anyone else? A male cow?

"What is wrong with feeding a cow corn?"

1) Corn is not a "natural" cow food. They have trouble digesting it. Their stomachs evolved to eat grasses, and corn gives them stomach pains and diarrhea, so they are given medicines to treat this.

2) Because they have trouble digesting corn, they are more prone to stomach infections when fed corn, so more antibiotics are required.

3) It is a terrible waste of energy, as cows process only a small percentage of the calories in the corn and evacuate the remainder. The cow's stomach has evolved to feed on grass, which has very few calories per weight. The richness of the corn is wasted, and it makes the cows ill.

4) Farmers now grow corn to feed cattle almost to the exclusion of other crops. I am no agricultural economist, but growing corn is not very profitable (but the demand is predictable and there are government subsidies, so farmers continue to do it).

Now, if we continue to feed corn to cattle for another 10,000 years or so, they might just evolve a digestive system that can efficiently extract energy from corn without making them sick.

Gootsie:

Sorry, I figured "bull and heifer" might confuse folks. Maybe it was just a very butch cow.

reticent_irreverent said,

Oh, sorry, RETICENT_IRREVERENT said "Is this issue going to start "clone wars"?"

Yes. Christian fundamentalists will ally with animal rights activists to defeat the forces of evil (i.e. reason and progress).

It was, after all, Yoda and the Jedi who commissioned the clone army...

Sue has already provided the drinks and NO she did not invite herself. However, you R_I, did.

wondering what is the best state to visit, 4 states away from Kansas

Sue has already provided the drinks and NO she did not invite herself. However, you R_I, did.

Oh, so the lies catch up to you dont they R.I.? No, don't worry about me, I'll have fun here at home, I'll just have a drink and...go to bed as I have 4 kid appointments scheduled for the rare day off...no, no, I'm not absolutely crushed, I'm fine, just fine...fine

Hey! Where'd the conga line go!?! Can I get it back? Let's see . . . . Day-O, Da-a-a-a-ay-O, Daylight come and me wan go home . . . .

tear Don't be sad about the rebuke, SG. Join the conga line, dance and be happy! Don't worry, be happy whistling and do-wopping Yeah, yeah that goes with a conga line too.

I want me some cow made o'sweet lovin' but some jerk is likely to slide me some clone.

southerngirl, I agree that RI is being very rude! He should invite all who wish to come...but be forwarned, it is by no means the "cool kid" party! And I'm not bringing tequila unless TOB invites me over to get it.

As per grain fed vs. grass fed: This is a non-issue as grass fed beef SUCKS! One year, our sweet neighbor/rancher fed his beef more hey because the price of corn was a bit high (if you can imagine that!). Anyway, every time I cooked that meat, the whole house would stink of hey and the meat had a funk about it. Corn fed all the way, baby! (Well, you can let them eat hey, but feed them plenty of the good yellow stuff.)

THANKS Azure, at least SOMEBODY will include everyone... shaking my tushy

I'm off to Oklahoma for the weekend, so I was just kidding about no plans, I'll be partying with the 100% natural cows and chickens er and my in laws Have a wonderful and safe New Year's celebration (if that is what you celebrate, if it is not, I didn't mean in any way to offend or not include you so happy... whateveryoucelebrate)

Best wishes to all for a Happy and Prosperous 2007!!!

"wondering what is the best state to visit, 4 states away from Kansas"

I'd be remiss if I didn't plug good, ol' Ohio. It actually has a lot of nice things... especially amusement parks. I have yet to find one better than Cedar Point. Lots of good roller coasters.

your worst nightmare: sounds like An Omnivore's Dilemma reader.

Want to know the difference between a "cool" "kids" party and any other party in Lawrence? The "cool" "kids" spend 75% of the time at the party telling each other how cool they are and the other 25% doing shots of tequila so that they really believe it.

Want to know the difference between a "cool" "kids" party and any other party in Lawrence? The "cool" "kids" spend 75% of the time at the party telling each other how cool they are and the other 25% doing shots of tequila so that they really believe it.

...so the uncool kids are just "doin it" while the cool kids are talking and drinking? SWEET!

Countrygirl -

Actually, I eat grass-fed beef almost exclusively, and only once have I ever encountered any sort of faint greenish tinge to the fat. I'm not sure where the grass-fed beef you're talking about is coming from, but it's not the norm.

You ask what's wrong with grain fed beef? While the digestive arguments posted above are interesting, my primary reason against it is because grain-fed cows are more likely to live in feed lots for some or all of their lives. I don't like feed lots because:

1. Overcrowding of cattle into that space increases the likelihood of disease.

2. That likelihood of disease due to overcrowding is one of the main reasons used to justify prophylactic doses of antibiotics being given to healthy cattle; overuse of antibiotics has a number of health and environmental consequences I consider unpleasant.

3. Runoff from an acre of full-capacity feed lot is a heck of a lot uglier than runoff from an equal area of full-capacity grass pasture.

4. Driving past a field of cows is a lot more pleasant than driving past a feed lot.

5. Because the soil is ground to powder with hard-pack under it in drought-prone areas (like, say, Texas or Western Kansas), it decreases any sort of groundwater recharge (besides which, you wouldn't want groundwater to recharge through that degree of filth anyway), increases runoff and thus erosion on surrounding properties, and leaves a churned mudpit for the animals to stand in.

Basically, I'd eat grain-fed free range beef, though I'd prefer grass-fed for the digestive and environmental reasons (you forgot "The indigestibility of corn as a dietary substance increases flatulent emissions, a leading cause of greenhouse gases"). But I haven't yet been confronted, in the years I've been reading labels and interrogating the people selling me cow, with grain-fed free range beef, so I'll happily stick to my grass-fed. But just the concept of feed lot beef turns my stomach. I'll even go out of my way to look for beef that wasn't even kept in a feed lot waiting for slaughter, if I can (it exists, but it's harder to find and it helps if you know your butcher well enough to be on a first-name basis with him).

werekoala - the only reason I caught that is because when I was in high school, I made a comment about a female bull. My boyfriend never let me forget it. I was a city girl, after all.

Damn, Badger!