In favor of Cloned Meat
Cloned Meat: Yea
By John J. Otrompke, JD
Some of you might have heard of PETA’s recent announcement of a $1 million reward for the company to produce and market cloned meat by a certain deadline, and you may be wondering, What should I think about it?
The answer is simple: I am for the proposal. (In fact, I tried for the better part of last week to talk PETA out of some of its money in order to work on the cloned meat project).
You may be wondering, why? The answer to this is a little more morally and rationally ambiguous.
Everybody knows that biotechnology is fraught with both physical danger and moral hazard, and by now everybody should know as well that consumption of animal products is generally unnecessary for human well-being.
From this perspective, perhaps, the idea of cloned meat is irrational.
But my opinion on cloned meat is not necessarily grounded in reason. Rather, I sometimes enjoy animal products, though I could not possibly say enough good things about vegetarianism.
Also, cloned meat is well, cloned; that is, it doesn’t involve the suffering of the animal, so it is not outright evil in the way eating live animal meat is. Perhaps voluntarily taking on physical danger for the purpose of enjoying cloned, non-live animal products is a little more acceptable, perhaps as a form of individual freedom or under a victimless crime argument.
In any case, if cloned meat ever makes it to my plate, I intend to eat a lot of it!
-Medical Robotics Magazine1 comments
posted by John J. Otrompke | 3:02 PM
