Thursday, January 11, 2007

70 pints a DAY!?

The ITV News yesterday showed a huge 10 minute piece about the offspring of a cloned cow that had been born in this country about a year ago, and proceeded to launch into an "analysis" of what the risks to consumers might be. As far as I can see this is just shameless scaremongering - the only risks to cloning cattle to produce 70 pints (yes, 70) of milk a day is that to the animal. Before the intensive selective breeding of Fresian/Holstein (and Jersey to an extent) cattle they produced a fraction of the milk they do now. This was clearly less efficient, but seeing modern dairy cattle walking around with hugely distended udders, covered in scratch marks, and the high rate of mastitis present in the UK dairy herd makes you wonder. The metabolic strain that producing such high quantities of such a product must surely take its toll, and eventually lead to premature culling.
Cloning cattle to massively increase yields is wrong, but the human biased angle put on it by ITV was shocking. I hope that consumer worries stem from a welfare perspective rather than the implied health perspective given.

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