
China ‘cloning factory’ to produce cattle, racehorses and pets - bootload
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/12013158/China-cloning-factory-to-produce-cattle-racehorses-and-pets.html
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jbob2000
What's more impressive is that China can build a cloning factory for ~$30mil
CAD, yet it costs us ~$20mil to build a small pedestrian bridge.

[http://www.cp24.com/news/city-unveils-designs-
for-19-7-milli...](http://www.cp24.com/news/city-unveils-designs-
for-19-7-million-fort-york-pedestrian-bridge-1.2672336)

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mfringel
What it sounds like you're saying is "I believe I know how a bridge is built,
but I have no idea what a cloning factory entails, so the latter is more
impressive."

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jbob2000
Fair enough! I figure a cloning factory requires some expensive machinery and
electronics, notwithstanding already expensive things like climate control,
power, and lighting. And it's not like people have built cloning factories
before, so you can't exactly look up plans on the internet. By comparison,
bridges are fairly well understood and much simpler.

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cup
A cloning factory is private property, a bridge is public access.

Presumably you think the technology in a cloning factory is more expensive
than bridge making equipment, but maybe you're not taking into consideration
the various codes and legal requirements that are necessary to build a bridge.

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openfuture
Haha what about the legal mess around cloning... seems like that would be a
tad more expensive process than getting a licence to build a bridge...

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halviti
The Chinese government is the one providing all of the money and pushing the
program. I have a feeling that red tape is not as much of a problem for them
as you assume.

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siscia
I believe we are going in the wrong direction.

The point should not to have more cattle, but to produce food in a more
sustainable way.

In my opinion they should aim to produce meat in vitro.

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roghummal
These people are working on cloning, other people are working on in vitro
meat. There are still plenty of problems to solve in either process.

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siscia
Definitely, but one problem will bring more value to people than the other,
which one ? It depends.

It depends on what is your time horizont, it depends on your values, it
depends on your actual problem right now.

What I said, is that, in my humble opinion, from my perspective, is more
valuable to work on a way to make meat sustainable and affordable for all than
to work on cloning.

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cyorir
Just want to point out that they are partnering with Sooam, Hwang Woo-Suk's
company. They'll need to avoid his reputation for fraud ethics violations.

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cpeterso
What is the value of cloning livestock? You still need to raise them from
calves. Is cloning more economical than traditional animal husbandry? Cloned
livestock also increases health risks from reduced genetic variance.

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kanzure
> Cloned livestock also increases health risks from reduced genetic variance.

Like, "animal husbandry can manage genetic variation, but cloning can't" ?
Doesn't add up. In both cases you can have humans in the loop to make sure
sufficiently diverse samples are preserved and used in populations.

All livestock populations should be genetically monitored, anyway.

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eimai134
We have plenty of pets already who don't have homes. The last thing we need to
do is clone more.

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Falling3
Plenty of pets and plenty of livestock. The xkcd biomass graph is a great
example of how unnecessary this kind of thing is.

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suprjami
RePet is now a reality. Get your ass to Mars, get your ass to Mars, get your
ass to Mars...

