• Question: And, will you ever be able to clone food so that you don't need to buy it? x

    Asked by saracallaway to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Hi saracallaway,
      Being able to clone food wouldn’t help you here. When you clone an animal, it starts off as an embryo, and grows into a baby, before gradually growing up, just like a normal animal. You don’t just get a full-grown animal right away. So you still have to go through all the effort of raising it, looking after it and feeding it. So cloning wouldn’t help you get food like that.

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Hi saracallaway,

      As James V says, you can’t clone something into being it’s adult form, but there is a lab in Holland who are presently working on making synthetic meat, they hope Jamie Oliver will cook the first burger made from man made meat. Meat is taken from the muscley fresh of animals, and this muscle is made up of strings of proteins (biological compounds). This lab have been creating their own proteins (which they can grow in a lab) and put them together in the same way as they would be in meat and make them in the shape of steaks and burgers. So who knows, maybe the days of beef from cows will be over soon?

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