China Set to Open Cloning Factory

Within the next seven months China plans to open the first cloning factory. There, they plan to clone cattle, pets, and eventually humans. They have also been working on ways to clone extinct or dead animals; for example the wooly mammoth is one such animal they have been developing methods for. The factory is opening with hopes to produce 1 million cows a year by 2020. They anticipate that the cloning of cattle and other such animals could help with world food supplies and specifically China's food crisis. Xu Xiaochun, the CEO behind the company hopes that helping aid the food crisis will shed a new light on the moral issues behind cloning, and people will see what good it can bring.

This article was chosen because of the moral issues it brings into question. While I do see the practicality of cloning animals for food, there still is just a uneasiness about it. I'm not entirely on board with the idea of eating cloned meat, even if it is FDA approved in the US (which it is). And while cloning humans might be something others are into, I personally get a little wierded out by the thought of there being an identical me. Overall I felt the story just showed how far we've come in genetics and what direction this is headed.

Food of the Future

As global warming becomes more and more of a reality, scientists and researchers are seeing how food crops will hold up in future climate conditions in the upcoming decades. Pollutants and heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide are expected to rise, and this could seriously harm the food supply of the planet.

Some of the farming fields trying to mimic growing conditions are those just a few miles from the University of Illinois, where scientists are testing predicted future growing conditions on corn and have been for the past decade or so. Pipes spray extra carbon dioxide and ozone (which is harmful and corrosive on ground level) into the air. Other equipment tries to mimic droughts and heat waves. The results have been troublesome, as the data shows that compared to today’s crops, the crops grown under future climate conditions are extremely deficient in nutrients. Furthermore, even though plants would benefit from an increase in carbon dioxide, the stresses caused by other factors offsets this benefit significantly.

Negative impacts on the food supply in the future are anticipated, and therefore people are trying to work towards solutions. Some solutions suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are changing farming practices and improving the genetic variety of crops. Another solution is reducing ozone, because this seems to have a bigger impact than realized, and would be an easy pollutant to control. Researchers are using modern genetics, agriculture and climate science to create a food supply that will be able to withstand the future climate conditions. 

I find it to be a very good thing that people are already taking steps to improve our future in the face of the global warming crisis, since many seem to want to sit back and wait until it’s too late to do anything. I hope that this problem can be addressed since the world is already undernourished. It seems like a daunting task to make plants undergo a great deal of genetic change in only a couple decades.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/testing-future-conditions-for-the-food-chain.html