World’s Biggest Animal Cloning Center Set for ’16 in a Skeptical China

Two companies in Asia plan to build an animal cloning facility in China next year that would be the biggest of its kind. The people behind this compare the cloning of animals to the process that is used to grow genetically modified strawberries. Many people are concerned with the safety of cloned meat. The owners of the company say that their beef will be the best tasting and will solve China’s problem of importing cows. The lab won’t just produce cows they will also make embryos of sniffer dogs, and racehorses. The companies claim that their goal is to start a social movement and get other people to start cloning animals as well. The people of China and around the world have a lot of doubt about the lab and there is little support for it.

If this cloning center does what it is setting out to accomplish it will have a tremendous effect on agriculture. We will have more animals than we need and not enough food for them. I do not know how they are going to sell their embryos because a farmer would need a female animal to carry the clone and it makes more sense to have your cows naturally reproduce. In Europe they banned cloning of animals so I do not see a trend of livestock cloning spreading to new locations. No one seems to be backing the lab and I do not think that they will be successful. This situation raises a lot of ethical questions about the agricultural business.

I thought that overall the article was well written and informative. I would have liked to know what the Chinese, or any other, government had to say about the plans, or if anyone is supporting the lab. I enjoyed reading the article and found that both sides of the argument were discussed. I liked how the author connected this example to what is happening around the world with regards to cloning. The use of online reaction provided a nice viewpoint from the ordinary people of China where most articles would only interview experts.

Guo, Owen. "World’s Biggest Animal Cloning Center Set for ’16 in a Skeptical China." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/asia/china-animal-cloning.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience>.