[Avodah] Kashrut of Cloning

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Liron Kopinsky asked several questions about the kashrus of cloned animals. Before we get to those questions, I'd like to first address his side-question:

> 2b) does it matter if they were "born" from a test tube or
> by implanting them into a uterus?

WADR, I think you've been watching too many science fiction movies. AFAIK, there is no technology currently available, or even envisioned for the near future, by which a cloned fetus can grow and develop in anything other than the uterus of a living animal.

What I *have* seen discussed is the possiblility of growing specific body parts (such as an organ or a piece of meat) in the laboratory, without growing the entire animal. I vaguely recall an article on this topic appearing in the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, but I could weel be mistaken.

Regarding regular cloning, in which [warning: oversimplification ahead] an identical copy of a living animal is made by putting some DNA into an egg cell, and implanting it into an animal to grow and be born normally --- I can't imagine why the kashrus of such animals would be any different than the kashrus of animals born from other sorts of Artificial Insemination. If this raised kashrus problems, I'm sure we'd have heard about it by now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_insemination --
> Artificial insemination of farm animals is very common in
> today's agriculture industry in the developed world, especially
> for breeding dairy cattle (75% of all inseminations) and swine
> (up to 85% of all inseminations).

R' Joel Rich has seen some articles on this topic, and wrote:
> My general take is the jury is out, the mekorot are sparse...

Well, "sparse" is a lot more than the "non-existent" which I would have expected. I'd love to hear some of the arguments against cloned meat.

Akiva Miller
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