Best Food Writing: "The Other Other White Meat"

"The Other Other White Meat" is an article written by Ben Paynter for Wired Magazine. In the article, Paynter explores the idea of cloing livestock. To learn about cloning, he visits two businesses that use cloned animals. Paynter begins his article by explaining some of the benefits of cloing animals. The benefit of cloning is that it can produce higher quality products which can be sold at a higher price. However, as Paynter explains, there are some issues involved in cloning animals. One problem is the idea that consumers often shy from willingly eating cloned meat. They often fear that the meat is somehow unsafe. However according to Don Coover, that idea is "total bullshit," and "unless you tell them it's a clone, no one can tell." There are also problems sometimes with the health of the cloned animals. Pig farmer Steve Earhart explains his experience trying to bread a litter of cloned pigs. All four of his cloned piglets died within a few months of birth. It turned out that their deaths were a result of a side effect of some cloning called sudden death syndrome. To account for this, farmers now use the offspring of clones. According to biologist Konrad Hochedlinger, "any abnormalities you see [in clones] are erased in the next generation."

Discussion Questions:
1) Is it ethically acceptable to clone animals?
2) Would you have a problem with eating cloned meat or drinking milk from a cloned cow?