On this episode of China Uncensored,
China will do anything to "meat" market demand.
Including...
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored.
I'm your host Chris Chappell.
If you're like me,
you want answers to the questions that matter most.
"Where's the beef?"
Where's the beef indeed.
If you answered,
"On a farm,"
haha, that's so cute.
No, the beef is in Tianjin, China,
where the world's largest animal cloning facility is under construction.
Chinese genetics company BoyaLife wants to be the first to take animal cloning to an
industrial scale.
BoyaLife's 31 million dollar cloning plant will go into production in 2016.
It will start by producing 100,000 cloned cows per year,
eventually reaching one million.
Holy Cow!
Their goal is to provide 5 percent of the meat eaten in China.
You know, the meat that's not rat meat falsely labeled as lamb.
Mmm, my mouth is already watering.
So how does this cloning work?
"A DNA strand like me is a blueprint for building a living thing."
Actually in that case I believe it worked like this.
But here's a better explanation.
"Cloning is where you take all of the genetic contents from one cell and move them somewhere
else and reproduce them."
Helping BoyaLife is a joint venture partner:
South Korean company Sooam Biotech.
It's run by a man once known as the "king of cloning"
until he was fired from the Seoul National University for
"research fraud and
gross ethical lapses in the way he obtained human eggs for his experiments."
So this new Chinese cloning plant is in good hands.
As for practical concerns like
how will they manage to feed so many cattle?
and what will the environmental impact be?
Well, that was somehow left out of the BoyaLife press release.
Also left out of the press release: all the ethical concerns.
Cloned animal meat is a hugely controversial topic in many countries.
A topic BoyaLife dismissed with a single vague sentence.
In Europe, it's illegal to sell cloned meat.
Parliament voted to ban it because of human health and animal welfare concerns.
Which is why people freaked out when a lamb crossed with a jellyfish was sold for meat
in Paris.
What's the big deal?
It's like lamb with mint jelly, but all in one.
Now the long-term health affects of eating cloned meat are unknown,
though there is some evidence that cloned animals may die earlier.
In the US, the FDA says cloning can improve the quality of animals and approved cloned
meat for human consumption.
No special labeling is required.
So are you already eating cloned meat if you live in the US?
Well, since no special labeling is required for cloned meat,
how would you know?
But according to the Guardian, most cloned animals are used for breeding,
not for food.
Is there such debate in China?
Well, the Chinese people might have concerns,
but who cares?
The government gave it thumbs up,
so no debate.
And why worry?
BoyaLife’s chief executive said cloned beef is
"the tastiest beef I've had."
And I'm sure he's totally unbiased.
The US doesn't import beef from China.
But that's because of concerns over quality.
But as BoyaLife's chief executive said,
"We are going [down] a path that no one has ever traveled."
And I'm sure everything will work out just fine,
like it always does in China.
But for now, I think I'll stick to a burger made in the traditional way
by grinding together 1,000 cows from five different countries.
I'm sorry!
I'm lovin' it!
So would you eat cloned beef?
Let me know what you think in the comment section below.
And please like this video and subscribe to my channel.
Once again I'm Chris Chappell, see you next time.