Inside the Creepy, Surprisingly Routine Business of Animal Cloning

Photographs by Brian Finke

Twenty-seven years ago, Ty Lawrence began to be haunted by a slab of meat.

The carcass, which he spotted at a slaughterhouse while doing research as a graduate student, defied the usual laws of nature. The best, highest-quality steaks—picture a rib eye festooned with ribbons of white fat—typically come from animals whose bodies yield a relatively paltry amount of meat, because the fat that flavors their muscles tends to correspond to an excess of blubber everywhere else.