Intergalactic Summit

I have no experience dealing with livestock, because I don't eat or use animals.

I would try the genetic engineering option; there is always room to improve upon nature.

I'm sorry, did you have anything of value to say? I'm thinking that you were just interested in trying that lame attempt, to attack Nation and me. Are you still upset that I dislike the State?

If you're on a temperate world, which by this discussion I assume you are, you're probably already surrounded by major and minor instances of genetic modification. These lumps of rock weren't always habitable when we first discovered them, and even then evolution took us by surprise.

Bit of advice though, gene-modding or no, closed environment experimentation and trial runs are your friend.

Theorising what impact and organism might have on an ecosystem is all well and good, but more often than not conservationists are left with their pants down over the actual results. Any organism, gene-modded or not can mess up an ecology.

A genetic immunity will be far cheaper, easier to manage, and more effective than a sealed environment that can fail for any one of hundreds of reasons. Plus, when the animals breed, that immunity is passed on. All you need are fences or some other means of limiting their movements, to keep them from unduly disrupting the surrounding ecosystem... No matter the sentiments, your friends don't get to have it both ways, unfortunately. Either they let them roam freely, and take the risk, or use some method of control. The advantage of the genetic option in that regard is in the fact that said control can be far less obtrusive.

Oooooooh snap

Stop your carping, Jurou.

Why do you coddlle each other with your posts?

There are pressing economic reasons for animal ranching as opposed to mass cloning, not least being that large mammals such as beef cattle are vastly more expensive to clone and keep lobotomized in an exercise tank than they are to breed the old-fashioned way and let exercise themselves on open pasture. Dirtside, a cattle ranch is by far the more economic alternative to biomass growth tanks. In space, it's the other way round of course, but there's still a huge difference in price involved - meat in space is much more expensive than it is groundside.

Is it cruel? I'd argue not. Somebody's going to exploit that land anyway but at least when ranching is involved that species is now riding on the human bandwagon, deferring the challenge of genetic propagation to our responsibility at the expense of a predictable (and short) lifespan before slaughter. Given that they're non-sentient, I'm quite sure it doesn't bother them in the slightest - lacking the human capacity of foresight as they do, it's not really valid to project how we would feel onto those animals.

The alternative is clearing the land for transgenic crops, fumigating the land to keep the local growth as monoculture as possible, and driving any native animal species into increasingly inhospitable niches where their population inevitably dwindles and natural selection takes over.

I'd wager that a creature incapable of intellectual foresight most probably experiences more total seconds of comfort and contentment in the regulated environment of a ranch than in the wild, always on the edge of death by starvation, injury or predator.

Oh sweetie, you weren't terrified of tank-grown meat the last time we met.

As I mentioned the animals will be living in the pastures on the outskirts of my home town which is a beautiful and enriching environment the area itself is rather rural so the population are used to certain styles of living however the main use of these animals will be the full range of commodities they provide e.g. their milk, meat and material. Much of the testing is to create an animal which can roam the pastures freely and survive the natural predators, pests and diseases.

I hope this answers your question and moderates your disgust.