Subject:
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Re: Flesh eaters stole my brain (was Re: Why is cockfighting bad?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 24 Jul 2000 18:48:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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1850 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Steve Bliss writes:
> Here's an odd twist to think about: most (all?) domesticated animals,
> especially farm animals, are sufficiently different from their wild
> bretheren that they can be considered separate species.
Is that really true? Cows can breed with bison, so it's hard to imagine that
they can't breed with their forebears. (Don't they come from European water
buffalos or something?) I also recal a story from somewhere, maybe a class,
where some farm swine got loose and bread with boars or something and there was
a problem with the crossbreed being friendly and viscious or something. So I'm
not sure if you could really say that they have speciated. (Though there is
little doubt that most agriculturally significant breeds simply can't survive
in the wild.)
> Also, if we can raise meat in a vat, we can presumably raise other useful
> animal products in a vat.
Hopefully. What if a cast of your body could be taken, and a leather
jacket/pants/bondage_outfit/motocross_suit/whatever could be grown as a single
sheet with no seems. That would be cool! And ivory (Save the walrus!)! And
lots of stuff, really.
> If we start getting all our animal products from vats, there will no longer
> be a need for the source animals. So the numbers of those types of animals
> will decrease. And they will possibly become extinct.
>
> If domestic cattle become endangered, will we be required to protect them
> from extinction?
Hopefully not required. Some would choose to. There is a significant movement
in the chicken world to retrieve breeds which are on the edge of extinction.
Many of them are better for the backyard flock than the commercial layers and
fryers because of the scale at which they are kept, but few enough people have
backyard flocks anymore that they are getting lost.
Chris
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