Eating animals and their delicious bodily secretions

Just thought I'd drop a little rant. Apparently the FDA has said that cloned animals are safe to eat. As somebody who has the most basic understanding of biology, I say, "No s***, sherlock". I can understand (maybe) being worried about irradiated stuff, hormones, steroids, and all that other "flavor-enhancers" that probably wind up in my Oscar Meyer. The whole point of cloning is that the animals are the same. Same when they are alive, same when they are dead, same when cooked at 350 and basted every 15 minutes with olive oil and sage. They are basically forced-twins. And I don't know if you've ever eaten twin cows before, but let me tell you, they are delicious.

Funnily enough, some people are saying that the advent (and possible popularity) of cloned meat will cause more people to switch to Vegetarianism, or even Veganism. I've got my thoughts on the subject, and the internet is always listening, so here goes:

In my mind, the purpose of altering your diet from the norm is to correct for dietary changes that have been made over time (specifically relating to animals). Changes are generally made in a sequential order (you've got to screw up one thing before you screw up something else), so to me it makes more sense to fix the latest change first. In this case, the changes have been made by humanity as a whole. So, let's go back to the latest mistake, probably 40 or so years ago: the use of growth hormones, steroids, and all that great stuff in animals that we eat. Easy enough to correct, just don't eat any meats that are made with that stuff. Fine (hopefully, the USDA is helping us label this stuff, I have no idea, and am just an ignorant eater of food.)

Second change, probably about 100 or so years ago: using excessive preservatives in foods like bologna, hotdogs, sandwich meat, etc. Fine. Easy fix, only eat fresh stuff. (Guilty, I love a hotdog).

Third change (and here is where we start going back a ways, probably 150 or so years): Animals that are factory raised. This is another easy fix, only buy free-range food. "Free-range" by definition is probably overkill for this change, but it let's me skip steps. This is the first step where you've got to start shopping at Whole Foods or something, so pay attention.

Fourth change: If you think about it, before the industrial revolution, the only real changes in the agricultural industry was the fact that it started. So, if you want to go that far (about 3,000 years or something like that), you've got to give up eating any meat that wasn't hunted. No more farm-raised anything. And definitely no dairy (ever tried milking a wild cow?) and a lot less eggs. So at this point you are at the doorstep of veganism, but far from vegetarianism.

Fifth change: We are already back into the pre-historical times of hunter-gatherers, since agriculture was the rock upon which civilization was built. So how much further do we go back? Well, according to most evolutionary biologists (most biologists), our digestive system is much more like that of a herbivore than a carnivore. The digestive track of a carnivore (like a tiger) is pretty much a straight shot, stomach to butthole. Herbivores' take a winding path. Hell, a cow has four stomachs. According to my hazy memory, our small intestines are around 54 feet long. That sounds pretty planty to me. At this point, we've probably traveled back before the time that we were exclusively bipedal (if you believe that hogwash).

So, back to the veganism/vegan/whole-foods shopper thing. This is my viewpoint:

If you say "I only eat free-range meats," that's basically saying "I think society took a dietary wrong turn about 150 years ago (at the latest), and blah blah blah."

If you say "I am vegan," you're saying "I think society took a dietary wrong turn around 3000 years ago, and the rest is mostly academic."

If you say "I am vegetarian," you're saying "I think humanity took a wrong turn when we started killing animals."

But other animals hunt for food. And they aren't wrong to do so (presumably, animals seem to get a free ride when it comes to questions of their motives). So, the question is, have humans evolved to the point where we don't need animals to survive any longer? Did we ever? How does cannibalism fit in? This issue just got a whole lot more interesting that cloned pigs.