[-empyre-] Does Cloned Animal Safety take into account the effect of Aesthetics on the long-term Ecological effects of Food Chain Design?, Eye of the Storm, Arts Catalyst, Tate Museum, London UK, 2009

[Adam Zaretsky]

Adam Zaretsky Submitted a Response to the United States Food and Drug
Administration call for comments on the Use of Edible Products from Animal
Clones or their Progeny for Human Food or Animal Feed as follows:
 
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0573/03N-0573-EC370-Attach-1.pdf

SubbDocket Number & Title:
2003N-0573 - Draft Animal Cloning Risk Assessment; Proposed Risk Management
Plan; Draft Guidance for Industry; Availability
 
Summary:
Availability of, and request for comment on, Animal Cloning: A Draft Risk
Assessment (to evaluate the health risks to animals involved in the process
of cloning and to evaluate the food consumption risks that may result from
edible products derived from animal clones or their progeny); draft Animal
Cloning: Risk Management Plan for Clones and their Progeny; and draft GFI
#179: Use of Edible Products from Animal Clones or their Progeny for Human
Food or Animal Feed
 
 
Does Cloned Animal Safety take into account the effect of Aesthetics on the
long-term Ecological effects of Food Chain Design?
 
We should not be overly worried about somatic cell nuclear transfer as a
Food Science edible technique.  The abnormalities that can be expected might
be delicious. Our worries stem from the fact that a large percentage of
breeders may not have had the Art Historical schooling that most Academic
students of Aesthetics might have had.  Right now, the only type of Œtaste¹
we can see embedded in cloned livestock is based on ramping up meat
production and maybe designing and cloning industrial beings born with zero
percent transfat. If we are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on making
copies of sires whose profitability is based on 4-H tropes of beauty alone,
then we are missing much of what contemporary art can lend to contemporary
breeding of gastronomic novelty.
 
How do we decide what is worth engineering for?
 
In particular, Livestock can be designed along a wide variety of Aesthetic
gene expressions.  Considering the range of gene expressions possible in a
collage of multiple genomic palletes, economic efficiency is neither a
simple concept nor our only deciding force. Beyond public acceptance of the
technology, there is also public trend diversity, novelty markets and niche
power to be brokered in this global competition for more unusual food. We
need to explore the entire range of clonables and widen the variety pool to
include gourmet, abject and non-utilitarian breeding projects.
Practitioners or Historians of Futurism, Surrealism, Abstraction, Minimalism
and other Contemporary art movements may all have their own special cow, pig
or chicken clone advisory role to play.  Consider what a gifted cubist could
bring to the table.
 
What are the cultural aesthetics of our ecological future?
 
The decision to design livestock along a plurality of aesthetic lineages may
have an impact on the future of ecology and diversity of our planet.  As
competitively designed meat factories take up more and more of the
terrestrial grazing land, we have come to understand that we live on a
planet dominated by humans and their domestic familiars. Designed and cloned
livestock are limited editions but they can reproduce independently.  The
industry animals may be foreign species brought forth from technological
sites but are they beautiful enough for us to want to live with them for
generations to come.  Sometimes real-time back fat is not enough.  There is
an economy of aesthetics, which will drive the ecological affect of our
engineered future. 
 
What can an understanding of the arts bring to livestock design?
 
The history of art may finally come to some use for humanity through
agricultural and other replicant applications.  The aesthetic hazards of
breeding without a proper understanding of Western Culture and our shared
artistic heritage must be taken into account.. The arts represent a great
asset for livestock design and a great way to insure that the future isn¹t
born looking dull, retrograde and a bit too sketchy.  Without a firm grasp
of Art History, our cloned food may not represent our national and
international goals as U.S. food producers and consumers.  The admixture of
global variety through genetic engineering and the cloning of spectacular
hereditary cascades should only be approved through an aesthetic advisory
commission made up of artists, art historians and aesthetics specialists.
The future of style and the avoidance of our populous eating any aesthetic
hazards depends on collaboration between new reproductive biotechnology and
the Arts.  
 
I hope these issues will be taken into account as we sculpt new life from
the media of biotechnology.
Adam Zaretsky

Link:
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0573/03N-0573-EC370-Attach-1.pdf


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