Farmer wants to sell clone milk as specialty

Published on Thursday 26 August 2010 14:45

A DAIRY farmer at the centre of a controversy over a cloned cow has described how he would like to sell milk from its descendants as a premium product.

Steven Innes also revealed he would be prepared to buy more calves bred from cloned cattle and would happily feed the meat to his own children.

Mr Innes became embroiled in a row earlier this month after it emerged that meat from one of his bulls entered the food chain, although it had been bred from a cloned cow.

An investigation was launched by the Food Standards Agency.

The Scots farmer, of Auldearn, near Nairn, told the BBC: "Some people we speak to think that we're walking about with white coats on, with test tubes, and we're actually making the cow."

Mr Innes suggested he would eventually like to sell their milk as a speciality product, if the rules would allow it. He said: "There might even be a possibility to bottle it separately and market it specifically as cloned milk, out of some of the highest genetic cattle in the world, and maybe even get a premium for it. We would put a picture of the cloned cow (on the container] and clearly state what she is."

Referring to the two bulls he bought, Mr Innes said: "We knew what they were and we had no issues with it,"