Research out of Europe tells us that more specifically the UK is leading the charge into trying to succeed into future food security needs for the world, where the use for livestock cloning is the epicenter. In addition, Petetin (2012) tells us when creating partial regulations and labelling, this in turn limits the control on cloned livestock, their offspring, and the consumable animal products produced by the animal. The UK is in favor of increasing the progress of the technology. Nonetheless, their government lessens the information available to the customers and the ability for them to decide on what to choose.
This new method goes against an increasing new thought to change to the consumers’ choices when regulating cloning (Petetin,
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Historically, domestication and the use of genetic livestock breeding practices have been largely responsible for the improvements in yield of livestock products that have been seen over recent decades (Leakey et al. 2009; Thorton 2010). “If past changes in demand for livestock products have been met by a combination of conventional techniques, such as breed substitution, cross-breeding and within-breed selection, future changes are likely to be met increasingly from new techniques” (Thorton 2010). The extensive use of cross-breeding in global production exposes the traits that best complement each other from different strains or breeds by using heterocyst which is also known as hybrid vigor (Simm 1998; Thorton 2010). The choice within breeds of farm livestock produces genetic changes usually in the range 1–3% per year, in relative to the mean of the single or multiple qualities that are of awareness (Thorton 2010).
Rates of hereditary change have increased in recent decades in most species in technologically advanced countries for several reasons, including more efficient statistical methods for estimating the genetic merit of animals, the wider use of knowledge such as artificial insemination and more focused selection on objective traits such as milk yield (Simm et al. 2004: Thorton 2010). “Less than 10 percent of the nation’s beef cows are bred
Why did scientists keep animal cloning a secret for so long? Did the scientists know that animal cloning would cause controversies? Do the bans on animal cloning actually prevent scientists from advancing cloning technology? Did scientists think that their discovery would help or even hurt the food industry? Animal cloning could help the food industry as long as its negatives do not outweigh the positives.
Humans have been manipulating genetic transfer for over 10,000 years since our hunter- gatherer ancestors began to settle in one place and started farming and planting crops. Those humans observed and chose organisms from natural selection to select and breed organisms that showed characteristics desired by them and this began the process of selective breeding. Selective breeding favours recessive alleles that do not persist in wild populations. Selective breeding is a process of increasing the frequency of rare and recessive alleles so that they appear in homozygous form. This has the effect of eliminating the alleles for wild type from the population and the process of domestication has become irreversible. The domestic species has become dependent on humans for their survival. It is from these domestic species that humans have selected and breed favourable genetic traits for their benefit, be it higher yield in plant crops, sweeter tasting fruit, and more milk from dairy cows or ease of handling stock, selective breeding continues to be used today.
The topic of cloning has brought much debate in science and also in society. Many
The progression of cloning technology could prove to be of great use to humans in the future. Further experiments on cloning will add to the understanding of genetics and lead to the production of animals organs that can be accepted by humans. Theoretically cloning could eliminate all problems regard organ transplants by producing animals that can act as suitable organ donors. More extensive cloning processes could also provide a solution for the world’s food inequity problems. Stronger, more resistant plants could be cultivated in large amounts through means provided by cloning techniques. The same idea could be applied to livestock, where common diseases can be eradicated to create stronger breeds.
Bringing desirable material traits into a commercial herd through maternal herd sires is Brett’s goal.
Used since the dawn of human domestication of agriculture and livestock, the basic premise of artificial selection involved early farmers selectively saving seeds to breed plants with certain characteristics (Evolution of Corn, n.d.). In more recent times, the aim has shifted from simply creating sturdier, tastier fruits and vegetables to being able to create as much food possible in order to meet human demands. Shaped by our modern global economy’s demand of efficiency, rising industrialization over the 20th century, and growing population, agricultural practices of genetic manipulation of crops has grown immensely over the last century. Taking a step beyond selectively saving choice seeds, the discovery of “hybrid vigor” by genetic engineers lead to farmers being able to interbreed
Farmers are using different technology for breeding. They used selective breeding to produce animals that exhibit desirable traits and they get more benefit from it. For example, using breeding techniques farmers makes cows which produce more milk with less lactose, and sheep which produce more wool. Farmers accept this new selective breeding technology because in the past, farmers would use growth hormones to promote such qualities. This became problematic when residue of the hormones remained in the meat, leaving it with a foul taste. When researchers began to clone transgenic animals, it became possible to develop certain traits in animals, which increased the quality of their yield. When a farmer would like to raise the standards of a herd, the breeding process is very slow and sometimes incomes can decrease (Wilmut 23). Many times when relying on sexual breeding alone to mass-produce these animals, there are chances of breeding out the desired traits (Freudenrich). Transgenic animal cloning will result in higher quality meats and dairies without the use of artificial hormones. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released in January 2008 concluded “edible products from normal, healthy clones or their progeny do not appear to pose increased food consumption risks relative to comparable products from conventional animals.” After 2008, US Food and Drug Administrative agree to use
Cloning is “the creation of exact copies of a gene, cell, or entire organism” (“Cloning”). Many objects can be cloned such as plants and cells. The topic of cloning becomes controversial when the focus is toward humans. It is evident that cloning of other species and organisms is possible. Because of this, the thought of human cloning has arisen in the science community within the previous few centuries. According to a poll produced by Time Magazine, ninety-three percent of American’s are opposed to human cloning (“Human Cloning”). This proves that the advancement of this topic has developed far beyond our wisdom. If nearly one hundred percent of the population disagrees with even the idea of this experiment, it is evident that they are unaware of the ways in which this technology has advanced. Furthermore, this unpredictable outcome of cloning will be irreversible. “Whatever effects cloning might have, cloning would be like opening Pandora’s Box, because there would be no way to turn back once the technology was developed and in use” (“Human Cloning”). As has been noted, the science of human cloning is not yet understood therefore it has advanced far too quickly for society to
In 1970, selective pure breeding was introduced and this improved the mass breeding of cattle, sheep and horses. This also enabled higher prices and profits for meat and wool.
If a cow, displaying the ‘double muscled’ characteristic was produced, this enables the breeder to inbreed this cow, with the original homozygous recessive bull to create a purely ‘Belgian Blue’ breed. Other technology has increased the concentration of these desirable traits. To ensure farmers are not jeopardising their stock population, artificial insemination is a new form of genetic engineering technology. Artificial insemination/embryo breeding is a process that involves inserting the semen sample of a bull and inserting it into the heifers uterus. Or taking eggs from a heifer and semen from a bull and inserting into the uterus of another heifer. This process can increase the concentration of selective breeding as the cows with less desirable traits are enable to breed as farmers insert reproductive cells of the biggest and best cattle into to the average cows and therefore increase production of offspring. Embryo breeding has become reasonably affordable and therefore farmers can increase productivity to meet increased meat
The dramatic increase of people on planet earth over the span of 5 decades has raised many questions about food production and how much is needed to sustain the rising population. Furthermore, the increased productivity of animals, specifically the growth and processing of animals is now needed more than ever in order to support the upcoming years. Moreover, the means to combat this problem is the use of genetically modified animals. Genetically modified animals can contribute to the increase of animal productivity as there have been many examples of animals which have greatly accelerated growth periods, which decreases the amount of time it takes in which an animal can be sold as a food product. Additionally this also cuts the amount of food they consume by a significant margin, further increasing their efficiency. One example of this is the AquAdvantage salmon, which has a growth hormone gene from Pacific Chinook salmon and a switch on gene from ocean pout. The AquAdvantage fish grows at twice the rate of normal Atlantic salmon due to its ability to grow all year round, and at an increased rate. Through these advantages alone, anyone can see the incredible value and importance of genetically modified animals have over normal
Within only one year, there has been a 15.6 million increase in acres of genetically modified crops grown worldwide. It comes to question that such a popularity boom in using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would be linked to their benefits. Many food labels claim to be rid of GMOs, even though most American shoppers are not educated of what that exactly entails. Altering or replacing genes within a crop or livestock may seem dangerous; however, fruits are juicier, produce have longer fridge time, and livestock double in size in comparison to their previous generations. The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) claims that a significant increase in health issues was seen after GMOs were introduced to the public, yet no viable research
Humans have manipulated the natural selection process for many years to preserve favorable traits in their pets, crops and livestock. Long before Darwin, farmers were manipulating heritable traits of their plants and animals. For example, kale, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are just cultivated forms of wild mustard through artificial selection of certain attributes. When compared and contrasted, natural selection aims for fitness to survival whereas artificially selected traits are based solely on what the breeder desires. Hence, artificial selection can cause some problem traits to predominate in a species. An example is Dobermans, a breed of dog. Dobermans have been selectively bred for a certain appearance. In the process, a genetic
Global sustainability is multi-faceted topic and is very complex. However, at its essence, global sustainability is defined as using your resources wisely today to give your children a better life tomorrow. It is the balance between using enough to develop right now but leaving enough for future generations. For example, if we were only looking at preserving the environment and not developing it, we might use none of the resources and leave them to be. But the problem with that is that then there is no resources for us to use. On the other hand, if we were just looking to develop the land, we would use all of our resources, but then there would be no more left for the future. Thus, I want our
Technology has been getting more and more advanced meaning that scientists have access to more advanced equipment and can conduct more complicated experiments. Scientists have found ways of enhancing and changing the genetic makeup of organisms when they are forming making it possible to customize and choose different traits and features about an organism’s physical appearance. This is very useful for farmers as they can breed their animals to have a certain trait or characteristic. For example, a farmer may want a muscly cow so with today’s studies it is possible to collect the semen from their muscliest bull and choose the strongest sperm then artificially inseminate an egg from their muscliest cow to produce a muscly calf. They can then repeat this procedure once the calf grows up and eventually over a couple of generations of this they will end up with a very muscly cow. This is called artificial