China, Minimizing Food Imports with Cloning

In 2016 the world's largest animal cloning facility is set to open in Tianjin, China. The companies responsible for this 500 million dollar operation are Boyalife Group and Sooam Biotech. Recently, China has become overly reliant on cattle imports; to lessen such economic stress, this project was established to create a reliable source of beef cattle. Not only will this plan benefit China by allowing self reliance for beef, but cloning cattle will also provide high quality cattle due to cloning the best cattle. Aside from livestock, this clinic will also be used to clone sniffer dogs and racehorses; this facility with provide China with the highest quality livestock, service animals, and animals used for sport. Despite this potential solution to China's foreign livestock dependence, some of the Chinese population is against this new facility. After many food safety controversies like melamine-tainted baby formula incident, people are skeptical about whether the cloned livestock would be safe for consumption. Another reason for this opposition is the controversial location of this facility. In August of 2015 there was a deadly chemical explosion in this location raising the question whether that area is suitable for living. If successful, this facility can reinvent the way livestock is grown.

I am glad that this agricultural cloning facility is not being built in the United States. Cloning seems to be a sensitive subject and with the freedom to protest, religious groups, PETA, and any person who just enjoys protesting would just halt productivity and possibly lead to a shunning of the cloning industry. I believe cloning is a good idea because it creates a secondary source of food dependence. Cloning could prevent a shortage or an inflated price of food caused by disease or disaster at farms. I also believe that cloning should not be relied on as a sole source of agriculture; since it appears that the cloning facility will clone animals with similar qualities, disease could kill the clones very easily. By having the same traits, the animals will be susceptible to  same diseases which could be devastating to the population.

Original Source
Info about Boyalife Group; their website was currently down.