Chinese cloned beef: Food or disaster for the environment?

The plan to build a cow breeding factory to meet the demand for meat consumption threatens to push China into the risk of environmental pollution, food insecurity and public health decline.

Is China's beef beef a disaster for the environment?

The Boyalife Biotechnology Laboratory recently announced plans to build a plant that produces about one million cows a year near Beijing, China. Not only stopping at cows, Boyalife is also ambitious to create race horses, pets and dogs for mass reproduction in the future. However, most plans still aim to clone cows as food to meet the growing demand for beef consumption in China.

Expressing views on The Guardian, Jian Yi, China's private filmmaker and cultural activist, said he read news about the plan in a state of skepticism and fear.

In 2009, Yi directed the first documentary about huge meat consumption in China, leading to the growth of the food industry. In the documentary titled "What's for Dinner?" Yi discovered many problems surrounding the booming livestock industry such as environmental pollution, the risk of food instability, and decline. public health (including causes of antibiotics and hormones used in animal feed), climate change and animal welfare.

Nguu Nguu, a genetically modified cow with a calf at a laboratory at Beijing Agricultural University, China.(Photo: Li Wen).

Since that time, Yi has started to promote public awareness about these issues. Yi brings documentary films that are shown throughout China and use popular social networking platforms for his goals. Gradually, his campaign also attracted more attention, more and more people expressed concern about environmental and ethical issues stemming from animal food consumption.

However, the production and consumption of meat in China has not stopped booming.China currently holds the position of the world's leading meat producer , with an average estimate of about 60kg of meat a year (mainly pork, chicken and beef). In the United States, per capita meat consumption is twice that of China, but because of China's four-fold population, total meat consumption in the world's most populous country is still double that of the United States.

Last week, representatives of the Chinese government and other countries around the world gathered at the UN Summit on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris, France, to agree on coping options. with climate change. Ambitious to become a global leader in power, China also aims to green energy and limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Beijing is acutely aware of the serious pollution challenge it faces with the economic development process, when people must breathe daily in the dusty atmosphere of big cities and endure the smell foul from heavily polluted rivers. The option to expand the livestock industry exponentially, however, means that emissions increase such as methane, carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, N2O, which has the effect of warming the atmosphere. 300 times stronger than CO ₂ .

The cow cloning project is a move in response to the ever-increasing demand for beef consumption in China and the wave of competition in the agricultural economy with other countries in the world. According to the statistics of the US agricultural agency in 2014, China accounted for 11.5% of global beef production, equivalent to 7 million tons.

In the Chinese culinary tradition, beef is not a staple in meals of many regions. In southern China, where Yi matured, horned cattle like cattle and buffaloes had many values ​​in the livelihoods of farm households.

It was not until the late 80s of the last century that Yi, when he was an adult, enjoyed the first piece of beef in his life. He said that from then on, the appearance of beef dishes became more popular when Western culture was strongly introduced into China, fast food restaurant chains, hamburgers, fried chicken. Nationwide for two decades.

China seems to be under the influence of Western eating habits in parallel with economic expansion. Human cows, although created by scientific advances, are eventually introduced into industrial-scale factories, catering to food needs. It is worth mentioning that, these facilities are already very much scandalized by the dangers of human health through animal-transmitted diseases.

Carrying the same genome, the risk of large numbers of cloned cows does not succumb to the attack even higher than usual. Recently, Chinese pig farms have become the focus of scientific research by becoming a nest of resistant strains of bacteria.

A pork owner at a market in Beijing, the Chinese capital.(Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi).

The cause comes from mixing antibiotics in food to increase disease resistance for pigs, to promote pigs to grow fast and have eye-catching appearance. Antibiotic abuse in China's and global livestock industry is alarming, causing scientists to worry that the world is entering "post-antibiotic era" when famous antibiotics with healing abilities are gradually losing use.

In the future, humans can eventually clone successfully without using antibiotics in livestock. However, genetically modified foods have been met with opposition from Chinese people in recent years. Therefore, it is likely that cloned beef will face a very heavy boycott, unless processing plants seek to hide animal origin.

Even if animal individuals are cloned to overcome epidemics and public objections, they are still the cause of waste and methane makes the Earth warm.

China, like other Western-developed countries with farm practices, will waste huge amounts of animal waste far beyond its control. These types of waste will infiltrate water and rivers, half of which are already seriously polluted by industrial waste and chemical fertilizers. Agriculture on an industrial scale will then be responsible for more polluted water than existing industrial plants.

Once the production of animals is multiplied by humanity, Yi questioned the possibility of China preparing a plan to deal with huge amounts of waste? Or how to protect your underground water circuit for living and eating of people when practically a calf, depending on each stage of development, consuming more than 100 liters of water a day. Beef for meat is one of the species that consumes resources and produces the largest greenhouse gas among cattle for meat.

Many areas of China face the risk of water security insecurity. Billions of dollars have been spent by the government to bring clean water from the south to a booming industrial area in the north, including a network to bring water to Beijing and Tianjin, where the home is located. The village is being built and put into operation in 2016.

In the context of Tianjin City facing a shortage of drinking water, whether or not people will accept the plan of taking water from the south to supply the giant herd of cows to obtain a larger meat output to serve. for the emerging upper class?

Algae penetrate Thai Ho - China's third largest freshwater lake with an area of ​​2,250 km ² contaminates drinking water of millions of people in Jiangsu Province.(Photo: Rex / Imaginechina).

The Chinese government also understands the risk of food insecurity. The country is famous for setting up a pork reserve fund to stabilize the market when pork prices rise. With the world's leading population and a move to abolish a policy, China's economy is threatening to withdraw its limited natural resources in the future. It is not difficult to imagine the future when the remaining land and scarce water resources in this country are competing with large-scale cattle farms.

Yi cited, China was previously able to supply grain to the domestic market, but now becomes the world's largest soybean importer, with almost all imported soybeans for food. for animals. In 2013-2014, total imports of soybeans (mainly from the US and Brazil) of China amounted to 70.4 million tons, nearly 6 times of domestic production. Corn imports are also on the rise. China's deep dependence on foreign economic and political stability to achieve the desired output, according to Yi, is inevitable.

Moreover, giant factories such as animal cloning plants in Tianjin will narrow living space and seriously affect animal welfare. Human health when consuming these foods is therefore also affected. It is only a matter of time before more animals are cloned, when people realize this is a lucrative source of profit. However, the animals in the cloned herd once identified as imperfect will be cut or destroyed on an unprecedented scale in history.

Commercializing science as China's ambitious plan, according to Yi, may be opposed by Western countries. The massive development of the absence of conservation measures will push the traditional cultural values ​​that are highly valued in China with the development of the economy.