Where is the Real Food?

Cloned animals - cows specifically have been declared as safe to eat in the UK. Now I say up front that this has been going on in South America and parts of Asia (?) for ages so it is perhaps less of a novelty and more of an inevitability than anything else.

Nonetheless I am struggling with it. Not the notion of cloning per se - lets face it, much (read "most") of our grains and vegetables come from cloned seed (think GMO) - but for ethical reasons. And I admit I have only had 24 hours to think about this so while my opinion is fixed, my reasons are yet to be concreted.

I understand that the meat and milk from cloned animals can be proved to be ok for human consumption, or at least not detrimental. And I understand that the future of food security for nations, and the planet, is dodgy to say the least and cloning of food products is possibly our only solution to maintaining our present diets. I understand that farmers have bred animals for centuries for characteristics that are beneficial to their market and that cloning can be seen as a speeding up of this process. I understand that a cloned animal can have an equal quality of life as that of a "naturally bred" animal.

What I don't understand is why we NEED cloned animals.

Our diets have changed significantly in the last fifty years, not always for the best but lets leave that argument for another day. Our portion sizes have increased significantly. Our expectations of all food all year round, and always priced cheaply seems to have become the norm.

As a result we have needed to resort to increased processed food, GMOs, fake meat and the like. "And the like" now includes cloned animals.

When will we start focusing on seasonal produce, farmed ethically and sustainable, and priced fairly? When will start focusing on REAL food, with real nutrients, with little to no processing?

Image: "Cows in the morning" by mrak9

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