Originally Posted by MrFatbooty

Jokey remarks aside, what I get from actually reading the article they're not actually cloning specific cows for purposes of homogenizing the gene pool (i.e. all our food supplies are from the same 5 cow "copies").

Basically it's a technique for isolating specific traits found in certain individuals for breeding with a wider selection of other individuals to come up with more variations. So instead of say one cow has some particular trait and only being able to reproduce a few times, they clone that one cow 10 times and breed the clones with 10 different bulls, see which offspring exhibit the desired traits, breed those with some other combos, and on down the line. It's just that they're using cloning to do the selective breeding more efficiently.

I'll skip out from trying to explain the ethical/moral issues. That stuff is thorny. h: