John H – Biology
John Hiltonen will discuss unethical process of chicken cloning, and the procedures that accompany it.
Corporations are always looking for a way to increase profitability. They look for the cheapest ways to house and feed the chickens and try to keep labor costs as low as possible. So it is no surprise that they are looking towards cloning as the next big money-saving move. With cloning, they could make a fully grown chicken in weeks instead of months. They would not need to keep around breeding stock to produce fertilized eggs. Using cloning, the corporations could make millions of dollars. There are serious problems with cloning, however, and these problems must be addressed before a company could do this.
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/cloning-chickens-royalty-free-illustration/AA048731
How it’s done
When a chicken is cloned, embryonic stem cells are injected into a fertilized egg. This allows for the stem cells to take control and produce a chicken that is a mostly exact or completely exact copy of the bird being cloned. Through this process, the grower would not have to rely on genetics and a certain degree of chance in getting the desired traits. He would have the traits he wanted every single time because he or she would be making the same chicken over and over again. This means that every chicken would have the best meat, the most meat, the quickest growth rate, and everything that the grower wants without having to use genetic modification repeatedly. Just modify one chicken and then copy and paste that chicken into other eggs.
Advantages
By cloning chickens, the breeders can ensure that they get the best possible chicken every time. They know they will get the chicken that grew the fastest and had the best meat every single time a new chicken is born because they have already made that chicken a hundred times that day. With this form of cloning, the cloning process can be mechanized, producing hundreds and thousands of the highest quality chickens every single day without fail. They also save money on the cost of having to pay geneticists to keep on cloning the chickens. They would no longer have to rely on chickens breeding, they could use every chicken for food purposes, such as egg-laying and slaughtering.
Problems
The cloning of chickens, as with most forms of cloning, raises many serious ethical issues. One of the most prevalent being, “What if the chicken being cloned has a genetic disease that could be harmful to humans?” If this were to happen, millions of pounds of chicken products could be on the shelves and in the homes of people around the world before anything could be done about it. Another serious problem is the harm it could cause to chickens. Cloning can sometimes cause genetic diseases to appear that were not present in the original. There are those who are also concerned that if chicken cloning were to become the standard, chickens would no longer be able to adapt and evolve. This would mean that they would not have inborn resistances to changing or new viruses and bacteria. This could lead to an eventual extinction of chickens.
Conclusion
Chicken cloning has the potential to generate large sums of money. It can bring consistency to chicken farming and increase production. The breeders would be able to have the same exact chicken over and over again. The problems with chicken cloning pose a major stumbling point, however. The success rate in the cloning process for chickens is low, only about one in ten succeed (Davis). Also, worries of genetic diseases cropping up in the clones is of great concern to many people. The issue of how to ensure that chickens can continue to grow and evolve has also made many go against the idea of cloning chickens. Cloning chickens has the possibility to become a profitable venture, but only after some serious issues are fixed first.
Citations
Graves, Andrea. “Cloned Chickens on the Menu.” New Scientist. N.p., 15 Aug. 2001. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1159-cloned-chickens-on-the-menu/
Davis, Karen. “Genetic Engineering and Cloning of Domestic Fowl.” Genetic Engineering and Cloning of Domestic Fowl. United Poultry Concerns, 4 Nov. 2003. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.
http://www.upc-online.org/experimentation/102803ge.htm
“McDonald’s Move to Cage-free Eggs Is a Tipping Point for the Industry.”StAugustine.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.
Journey of A chicken 