With the largest population on Earth, China is also the largest consumer in the world in many aspects including food and that’s why China plans to clone cows for meat.
- China plans to clone 1 million cows by 2020
- China is now importing cattle from Australia
- Food cloning is becoming more popular as the market demand increases
The idea of cloning has been raising ethical issues ever since it first appeared. Of course human cloning is the most debatable, but animal cloning also has its pros and cons. However, cloning cows can prove to be the only solution for Chinese farmers who are having trouble keeping up with the constantly increasing beef demand of the nation.
Therefore, farmers are turning to these new biotechnology solutions that could enable them to create by 2020 almost 1 million cows. This will happen into a cloning facility especially created with this purpose which is estimated to be fully functional in 2016. The facility costs rise to $31 million. In the first year, they are expected to produce 100,000 head of cattle.
And if this doesn’t impress you at all, maybe this will. In July this year, China has made a ‘beef’ agreement with Australia. Beginning with next year, China will be spending up to $1.5 billion a year on 1 million head of cattle imported from Australia. You might be wondering why China is spending so much money on importing cattle by plane when they can easily clone the same number for less money. However, the China-Australia ‘beef’ agreement could last until the first in-house cow production is released, covering the market demand up until then.
Therefore, we could say China is taking all necessary precautions to meet the demand and not let Chinese hungry for beef. Moreover, they are also planning on cloning racehorses and dogs, not to mention sheep and pigs.
But China is not the only country that’s experimenting this new concept of commercial cloning. As we all know, in the U.S. the FDA already approved a genetically altered salmon. The main reason is that more salmon can get on the market at a faster pace than the one that grows naturally. And the same thing applies to any animal. Food is slowly but surely becoming scarce. Therefore, the market demand is more and more difficult to satisfy and commercial cloning can prove to be the best solution for food shortage.
Image source: www.bing.com
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