Will the cloned meat industry hurt or help traditional farmers?

Question

How?

Answer 1

I don't think it will either help or hurt traditional farmers any time in the foreseeable future. It will likely just stir up a lot of unfounded controversy.

Answer 2

Good question, I think there are 2 trains of thought.  

1.  By having people only buy non-cloned meat, the farmer might get paid more for not cloning.

2.  The farmer will get run out of business because larger, and wealthier farmers or business men will clone for cheap and produce more and more meat.

But I think it will take a long time to have a large effect on the market because a lot of people still aren't sure about the whole cloning biz.

Answer 3

Cloning is not a viable part of the agriculture industry and will be years before it will be commercially available.  

I believe that it could help the industry in developing a number of superior lines of genetics for types of meat and efficiencies for rate of gain when raising the animals.  

We could utilize less dairy animals if we reproduced the top producing animals for milk.  

The downside is that we will narrow our genetic baseline of DNA in any given specie if we do not maintain herds of non-cloned animals.

Answer 4

I doubt if it will hurt it in my area because farmers here raise the cattle and have it processed for individuals.  

There is nothing better than home farm raised beef.

Answer 5

Assumptions:

1) partial equilibrium analysis

2) Meat and cloned meat are imperfect substitutes

3) Demand for meat only function of price of meat

Conclusion: The introduction of cloned meat in the meat market will increase supply of meat and unambiguously decrease the overall price, diminishing revenues for traditional farmers.

Remark: The quantitative effect on traditional farmer's revenues of the fall in the price of meat will depend on the consumers' elasticity of substitution between meat and cloned meat i.e. the more substitutable meat and cloned meat are, the higher the negative impact.

Answer 6

First off, you need to define what a "traditional farmer" is.

Are you talking about one of the present day modern farmers who raise livestock in confinment, and feedlots?

Or are you talking about a REAL traditional farmer, like myself, who raise livestock on pasture, hay, sunshine, and clean water?

If you are talking about a traditional farmer, like myself, we are very few and far between.  Frankly, the cloned meat industry is not going to affect us.  Why?  Because I do not know of a single traditional farmer who would allow a cloned animal to set foot on their farm.  

If you are talking about the modern farmers who confinement feed, then the cloned animals have a possibility of upping thier bottom line ($$$$) for a short while.  Then it will crash, and crash horribly....not just a little, but in a dramatic way, like the sinking of the Titanic.

Cloned animals are all the same...zero genetic difference.  So WHEN a disease finally hits the cloned animals, it will wipe them out, 100%...and it will do it quickly.  The word "when" is the correct word too.  It is not "if" a disease will hit, but "when" will the disease hit.  It will happen, no question about it.

So what will happen in the U.S.A., if Flossy, the prize producing Holstein is cloned, and suddenly every single commercial dairy in the U.S. is filled will Flossys, because she produces more milk, on less feed?

Well, when the disease hits, suddenly Flossy the Clone will die....every single one of them.  There will be no milk, butter, icecream, cheese.  Thousands of people will suddenly be out of work, and then the ripple effect will hit.  So the dairyfarmer, the butter, cheese, icecream makers...all out of work.  Then the Pizza Parlors will close...cheese it too expensive.  There will be pandimonium at grocery stores to buy up the baby formula.  Powdered milk will sell for 5-10times what it sold for the night before.

It will get ugly, and FAST.  Ever think you'd live to see McDonalds go out of business?  It could happen.  Most of their hamburger comes from old dairy cows, past milking prime, and also from Argintina beef cattle (cheap meat).

So who will stop this devistating spiral?  Guess who!  The real traditional farmers....you know the ones who keep all kinds of cows...pedigreed, or not, but certainly NOT cloned!

They might loose a few cows to a widespread disease, but nothing like is going to happen on a farm filled will cloned animals and zero genetic diversity.

Problem is, traditional farmers are so few and far between, and they generally keep much less stock, it will take many, many years to breed a population of productive dairy cattle back up to meet all the needs of the public.

I've "pick on" dairy cattle....it could be any cloned food source animal, chickens, turkeys, beef cattle, pigs, sheep, ect.

Any of them would have serrious financial harm to our economy.  

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 7

Most likely hurt. seems everything scientist get involved with

hurts in the end. Oh! they will probably be able to grow bigger, better and faster etc. beef but. What if one gets such will all the clones get sick? probably. Cloning needs many many more years of study before we go head first into it.

Bonus-Space exploration is a total waste.

Answer 8

I don't think it's going to have an affect on them any time soon.  I think it will take years for us to see what happens

Answer 9

well it makes us, wonder too? but honestly i used to live in Minnesota, cattle is a big thing there, ecspecially to the dairy farmers, cause that would bother them a lot!!