Cloning fallout: are zombie cows in our future?

jeremytough sends word that the recent moves to accept meat and milk from cloned animals may lead to some disturbing next steps, including the development of “zombie” animals who don’t feel stress or pain at slaughter. From a purely ethical perspective, there’s a chance that this move could reduce suffering in factory farms in the longer term, but in the short term, genetic modification, just like cloning, can result in massive numbers of mutated cows who live brief tortured lives. From a health perspective (although I wonder why I’m still talking abotu the health issues of red meat in 2007), I’m imagining a sci-fi movie where these docile traits are passed on to consumers, but that would just be scare mongering. More likely would be a case where the incubation period for a health condition that’s passed to consumers from GM/cloned cows takes longer than the approval process to manifest – after all, mad cow disease is believed to take years to manifest in humans. Also, zombies eat brains. Everyone knows that. Link.