Oh, good golly! I encountered this company as a 'top ad' on the Front Page here at DKos, and de debbil prodded me to click on it. So of course I did click on it...
It's called Cyclone Dairy, and it offers milk from 100% cloned cows. At first I thought it was some sort of satirical joke, but unless these people are very good jokesters, I don't think it is. The 'Mission' statement offers just 4 reasons for why you and your family should pay extra for super hi-tech cloned-cow milk, just in case your local grocery store isn't offering that scrumptious, pus-laden rBGH Monsanto milk anymore.
• To provide reliable, high-quality dairy products for our customers and their families
• To further the progress of cloning in science, agriculture, and society
• To steward future cloning technologies through the research & development pipeline
• To provide a strong financial return to our investors
Well, there you go. How exciting! You've gotta love the "Our Products" page. First there's "Delicious, nutritious, 100% from clones. Drink up!" Available in pints, quarts and half gallons - skim, 2% and whole. Then there's "Gourmet cuts of tender beef. Coming soon!" Yeah. Those darned clones don't tend to live very long, but regular dairy cows don't live very long these days either, given the untenable conditions of their lives. Yum, yum!
Then there's The Clone Zone for kids, where it says right at the top... "Cows are way cool - and so is cloning. Check out these fun facts to find out why!" Among the six facts is that cows have four stomachs and cannot walk down stairs. Why does this remind me so much of Shawn and Ed's running argument in the B-movie cult classic, Shawn of the Dead - dogs can't look up?
In January of 2008, without much fanfare (or, apparently, conclusive research) the FDA and USDA declared that milk and meat from cloned animals could go straight into the food stream without labeling, but the good businessmen and women at Cyclone Dairy are so proud of their clones they've turned it into a direct selling point!
Which I'm sure will make the comfortably well off among us more than happy to pay three or four times the going price for milk from regular dairy herds bred specifically for their superb mammary glands the good old fashioned way. As for this homesteader and her family, I'm still in the market for a couple of fresh goats for milk. To go with my chickens and bees, once I can talk the menfolk into helping me build the enclosures, boxes and fencing. I'll let you know how that works out once I've had some success in getting help in the garden from them...
It may still turn out to be a joke by a bored geek with more web-savvy, time and advertising money on his hands than anybody needs. But it looks real enough to at least mention, for the humor if nothing else. One of these days I can just imagine that scientists are going to herald the development of cloned udders and boneless beef slabs that don't even need a cow! The udders simply produce milk continuously from their goo-filled tanks, and the beef just keeps right on growing bigger as perfect, juicy chunks of it are lopped off and wrapped for market. That would be a big step forward for cattle, not so sure it's an answer to humanity's lust for all things bovine, though. I mean... can fake leather ever really make us happy?
So. I've just gotta ask. Who among us will be the first to sign on to get their family's milk and meat from Cyclone? If you already have signed up, please do inform us of the price range so we can start saving our pennies up now. Thanks!