[00:00.17] Unit 93 Send in the Clones, Waiter It looks life beef.
[00:06.33] It tastes like beef.
[00:08.15] In fact, it's nothing less than 100 percent pure beef.
[00:13.16] But a batch of the beef drew nationwide attention in Japan when it went on the market advertised as the beef of a cloned cow.
[00:22.06]" It's nice and soft," said an office worker dining on the cloned meat at steakhouse.
[00:27.49]" I 'd buy it again because it tastes good." A government announcement that cloned beef had been sold unmarked for at least two years resulted in fear across the country.
[00:39.59] Many retailers stopped selling it because of negative news reports.
[00:44.56] The Agricultural Ministry insisted that the beef was safe and there was no need to mark its origin.
[00:52.16] Consumers, however, demanded an informed choice.
[00:56.18] There is no decision yet.
[00:58.35] But in the meantime, the ministry provided one cloned cow to be divided among a Tokyo restaurant and several stores around the country.
[01:08.12] It asked them to label the beef and see the reaction.
[01:12.08] PURE, a Korean restaurant in Tokyo's busy district, became the ministry's exhibition hall.
[01:19.21] Inside the packed restaurant, TV crews crowded around the beer drinking, beef eating customers, demanding opinions on the taste.
[01:28.44]" The word ' clone ' has a bad image," said a happy customer." It makes you think of someone creating human beings in a lab.
[01:38.08]" That did not stop her and dozens of other diners from wolfing down chopstick loads of the meat.
[01:44.24] Te restaurant had informed regular customers of the experiment, and lower prices for the event, which was to continue as long as the meat holds out.
[01:54.24] Customers got pamphlets explaining the cloning process and that beef from cloned cows is no different from regular beef.
[02:02.37] With a domestic cattle industry threatened by imports of cheaper beef, Japanese scientists and agricultural officials see cloning as the way to keep small farms competitive.
[02:14.44] Cloning, they believe, could make farmers rear genetically superior cattle at a lower cost.
[02:21.38] Cloned vegetables and fish are widely marketed here, lso unmarked.
[02:28.04] PURE's diners were asked to complete a questionnaire for the ministry on what they thought of the cloned beef.
[02:35.15]" I do not trust scientist," said a diner who works at a company that inspects organic vegetables.
[02:41.50]" I do not care what happens to me, but I would not feed it to kids,
[02:45.50]" he said." Who knows what kind of problems this might cause in the future?"