Lecture 35: Science of New Dishes and New Organisms
So far, genetically modifi ed foods don’t seem to offer the consumer
any practical benefi ts. Most of the applications have been geared
toward making profi t for the food industry. For the most part,
genetically modifi ed crops don’t increase yields and have not
signifi cantly cut down the use of pesticides.Other Food Technologies
Another technology that has garnered a lot of controversy in recent
decades has been cloning. Its application for food would be to breed
an optimal animal or plant and then simply clone it many times
without the necessary combination of genes in sexual reproduction
that would alter those desirable traits. The FDA approved this practice in 2006, and cloned beef, for
example, requires no special labeling. Like GMOs, this is nothing
new. We have been cloning plants for thousands of years; a graft or
rooting a cutting is a clone. However, it’s much more complicated
with animals, like Dolly, the fi rst sheep that was cloned in 1996
in Scotland. Cloning is not yet commercially viable, but it might be some day.
The main problem in that cloning for food is like monoculture—if
one disease kills one organism, then it will probably kill them all.
Genetic diversity is nature’s insurance policy, but cloned organisms
are very precarious. Recently, there have been experiments to grow meat in a test tube.
The idea is if we can get cells to divide and reproduce in a favorable
medium, we can get a fi ve-ounce piece of meat to grow to seven
ounces. That would reduce the overall number of cattle grown, and
the pressures they put on the environment, and increase the food
supply. At present, it is still completely economically unfeasible,
and it is uncertain what consumers will think of it—but it does
remain a possibility. Ethically, it seems to make a lot of sense if
you’re thinking about animal welfare.