Body-builder cows

Should we investigate and alter the architecture of life?

How can we know what’s going to happen in the future, from eating genetically modified foods? We don’t know whether they can ‘modify’ our genes if we eat them! This is one thing that preys on peoples minds when they eat meat, or veg, and don’t know where it’s been reared or grown.
But is this more sensitive, when it is the life of an animal that’s being transformed?

I recently watched a programme named Animal Farm on channel four, and one topic of discussion was the ‘Belgian blue’ bull. With the use of genetic engineering and ‘natural’ selection the cows with the best muscle tone have had their genes selected and ‘reproduced’ over many years to create ‘double muscle’ (or as we know it-more meat!)

In Seb’s blog ‘squirrels and potatoes’ he discussed how the potato originated from America and spread to the rest of the world, he also considered the ‘naturalness’ of these foods, and how they are no longer considered as ‘exotic’ after their acclimatization.
But isn’t that just desensitization?
And could we become desensitized to ‘body-builder cows’ roaming around our farms?!
This cow has been ‘designed’ (scarily) for our own greed.

But another thing which is more frightening, is meat being modified from cow stem cells and grown in a vat into a burger! The geneticists on the programme claimed this could be an alternative for vegetarians to start eating meat. But this is not meat. Yes, it is a derivative from an animal, and surely this would be considered by a vegetarian (and carnivores alike) as much more controversial than eating a ‘natural’ animal!
(I’ll just say this concept did not appeal to my vegetarian flatmate! Who claimed “that’s just weird!”)

But there are other ways in which intensive farming can be utilized in a positive way. For example, vitamin A deficiency kills 2.5 billion people a year, especially in the third world. So, geneticists have designed a form of rice named ‘golden rice’ which has been derived from genes of a daffodil and rice to increase keratin levels and vitamin A.
The scientists claimed that if this new strain of rice was to replace regular rice it could save millions of peoples lives.
Yet the farm where it is grown is treated like a bio-hazard sight. Its true that if the pollen of these plants were to pollinate other plants it could alter their genetics considerably, but would this be devastating? Not so much, compared to what a ‘Belgian blue’ bull could do to a herd of heifers!

Seb is right, there is no “right/wrong” or “black/white”, but there are some aspects that are more morally disturbing than others.
I think that when it comes to designing our future, with regards to genetic modification, it can come across as a mockery of nature.
The ‘Belgian blue’ seems to be an example of this, but this shock factor appears diluted when contrasted to the genuine benefit vitamin A rich rice could incur on our environment if put to use.

Animal Farm-Channel 4

Regine Pilling-flatmate

Seb Mitschl