And Now, Where’s the Beef?
So, a Chinese company announced November 23 that it was going to open the largest cloning factory in the world. The Boyalife Group, a cloning company based in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, has said that its primary goal is to clone cattle so to meet China’s beef shortage, its statement outlining plans to clone 100,000 cattle embryos initially with aspirations of upping production to 1 million in time. China is hugely concerned with any form of dependency whatsoever when it comes to food security, so in that regard, the company does seem to be singing the right kind of tune as it seeks government approval. Xu Xiaochun, CEO of the company, told the New York Times last week that cloning technology is all around and that the process is like “pouring a glass of orange juice into another empty glass.” Harmless enough, right? What could possibly go wrong given that the company’s website spelled it ‘introductoin” when looking to explain its mission? When cloning something that a person is going to consume, one might have thought that attention to detail is of the highest priority. Then again, this is the same guy who said that he needed to be “self-restrained” when asked about human cloning, saying that the only thing holding the company back is the “possible adverse reaction.” Given the […]
Science & Technology Dec 4, 2015