A Question of Breeding

In this week's Times, you can read about how human interference in breeding creates hideously deformed puppies.

You can also read about how the FDA has recently "tentatively concluded" that milk and meat from certain cloned animals is safe to eat.

Now guess which story is the most e-mailed story.

Don't get me wrong, I love puppies as much as the next person. People connect to the puppy story because they have empathy for dogs. Dogs are pets, dogs have eyes you can make contact with, hearts you can feel pounding when you hug them.

But where's the outpouring of emotion for the cloned animal? Remember Dolly, the cloned sheep who prematurely aged? How many test animals suffer and die before a clone is successfully grown? Aside from the empathy factor, what about the effects of eating cloned meat on the human body?

Just as Japan doesn't really NEED cuter, smaller animals, ultimately, I don't really see how this country needs MORE milk and meat. Livestock production for the most part isn't very humane or sustainable as is.

Part of the problem is this inconsistency in feeling towards food animals and pet animals. It really bothers me when people can't eat meat on the bone. It's not just picky eating, it's more of a refusal to acknowledge that the meat we eat was the flesh of a living animal. That hypocritical disconnect is a luxury the rest of the world can't afford. Of course I don't go and wring the necks of all the chickens I eat before plucking them and cleaning out their entrails, but at least I don't deny that my meat came from a body.

The American diet is supposed to be safe. While it doesn't kill, could it be altering our bodies? I am about 5 inches taller than my Mae, and I probably weigh 50 pounds more than she did at my age. My Mae likes to attribute my size to American chicken hormones. It's hard to say which contributing factors account for our size disparity -- convenience foods, large portions, high fructose corn syrup, bovine growth hormones, a white-collar sedentary lifestyle, etc. But it seems clear to me now that it has to do with American food.

When I went to visit my family in Thailand a few years ago, my aunt was clucking at me in disbelief. "How does a person get to be so fat?" she asked.

My 14 year old wisp of a cousin (most of my cousins are XS, and not at all malnourished), came to my rescue, exclaiming, "MAE, she's not fat! She's just American! Right? You're normal in America, right?"

And I said, "Yeah, pretty much." And it's true. My cousins don't belong to gyms. They hate being in the sun so much that they ride a scooter the 1/4 mile to the bus stop. Why are their bodies so different from mine?

I don't mean to get all preachy. Ultimately, I'm a hedonist before I'm a moralist, so while my politics dictate a local, vegetarian diet, I still love a good steak or roast chicken and don't ask often enough where that meat has come from. I just wish people would be less outraged about inbred puppies and more outraged about our increasingly suspicious food chain.