China Daily recently reported that a herd of 200 cows have been genetically modified to produce human milk.
It seems this news development puts a sock in the mouths of the folks who insist that cow milk is for baby cows only and that humans shouldn’t be drinking it!
Seriously though, this shocking development actually did occur at an exhibition of technological advancements for China’s 11th 5 year plan (2006-2010). Photos of the cows were showcased at the exhibition along with some head scratching comments by head engineer Li Ning, Director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnolgy at China Agricultural University:
“In ancient China, only the emperor and the empress could drink human milk throughout their lives, which was believed to be the height of opulence. Why not make that kind of milk more available for ordinary people?”
Li went on to add that this new technology is important as it makes affordable to the ordinary consumer the healthy proteins found in human breastmilk.
Li also claimed that products containing human milk produced by cows would be on supermarket shelves within 10 years and that the GM milk would be as safe to drink as milk from ordinary cows.
After reading this story, one can’t help but wonder if people who drink this milk grow bolts on their neck or if children who consume it say “Moo” instead of “Mama” as a first word?
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
Source: China Daily
Picture Credit
I see this as another example of man playing G-d. This will end well!
My first thought is ‘That can’t be good’. After reading it, though, now I’m thinking ‘It can’t be human milk as its not from humans’ Soooooooo…..I don’t know what they’re thinking. Maybe its supposed to TASTE like human milk… because obviously, its still from a cow! So, its still cows milk. Just really jacked up cows milk……
That’s so creepy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Moooooooooooo
Holy smokes. I’d love to know what GMO expert Jeffrey Smith has to say about this.
OK – this is really going too far. But then, in what arena of life are things not “going too far” these days.
Sarah, I will say, however, that you might be interested to know that the bottle of milk in your photo is from Japan. You may already have noticed that since it is bottled by Kirin, a Japanese company that is somewhat well known even in the US for it’s beer. I lived in Japan for a year and studied Japanese here, so I can also recognize the writing :-). Japan’s written language is a mixture of 3 “alphabets”, one of them being Chinese so they look quite similar.
Hi Adrienne, yes, the picture is of a coffee latte product from Japan .. I just liked the picture of the juggling cow with a pacifier in its mouth .. I thought it fit the story quite well .. that is the mixing of human/cow genome sick as it may be! 🙂
That is insane. What are they thinking? There is no way any animal can ever produce “human” milk. We don’t even really know everything that’s IN human milk…so how can they claim to have genetically engineered an animal that produces it?? It doesn’t even make any sense.
Totally agree – makes no sense that it would duplicate breastmilk if we can’t even identify everything that’s in the real stuff!
That milk travesty is as much “human” milk as commercial baby formula. At what point are people going to stop trying out do nature and figure out we all win if we work with it instead?
So incredibly disturbing. For the life of me, I can’t understand why people just can’t leave things alone. If God would have wanted cows to produce human milk, He would have made them that way.
That is entirely too disturbing. GM foods are just bad news all around, but that is just… ew.