Scottish farm at centre of cow clone row

AN investigation has been launched into claims that the offspring of a cloned cow entered the food chain, it was confirmed today.

The Food Standards Agency said two bulls born in the UK from embryos harvested from a cloned cow had been slaughtered, one of which "will have been eaten", while the other was stopped from entering the food chain.

A spokesman for Highland Council named the farmer in question as Callum Innes from Auldearn near Inverness. He was unavailable for comment this morning.

The council spokesman said: "We are working with the FSA and we sent two animal health officers to the farm yesterday to meet and speak with the farmer."

The revelation regarding the bulls came amid an FSA probe into whether any matter from cows born of a clone has been used in food production.

Under European law, foodstuffs, including milk, produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and gain authorisation before

they are marketed.

But the FSA said it had neither made any authorisations nor been asked to do so.

The two bulls, which were born in the UK from embryos harvested from a

cloned cow in the US, have been slaughtered, one last month and one in July last year.

They sired 100 cows at the farm near Nairn, whose milk has not entered the food chain, the council said.

Their future will be decided by the FSA.

Mr Innes is said to be one of the biggest dairy farmers in the area and has a herd of Holstein cows.

The FSA admitted today that it did not know how many embryos from

cloned animals have been imported into Britain.

FSA chief executive Tim Smith stressed that there were no health risks associated with eating meat or drinking milk from the descendants of cloned cows.

And he said that, while there was debate across Europe about how far the progeny of clones should be regulated, Britain's position was clear - that the Novel Food Regulations applied and should have been

followed.

An investigation was launched in the wake of claims that a British farmer had admitted using milk in his daily production without labelling it as from the offspring of a cloned cow.

The FSA said yesterday that it had traced a single animal, Dundee Paradise, believed to be part of a dairy herd, but could not confirm that its milk had entered the food chain.

It added that, during the investigation, officials had identified the two bulls born in the UK from a cloned cow in the US.

An FSA spokeswoman said yesterday of the cloned offspring so far discovered: "The first, Dundee Paratrooper, was born in December 2006 and was slaughtered in July 2009. Meat from this animal entered the food chain and will have been eaten.

"The second, Dundee Perfect, was born in March 2007 and was slaughtered on July 27 2010. Meat from this animal has been stopped from entering the food chain.

"The agency is continuing its work on tracing the offspring of clones claimed to produce milk for the UK dairy industry. We have traced a single animal, Dundee Paradise, which is believed to be part of a dairy herd but at present we cannot confirm that milk from this animal has entered the food chain.

"As part of this investigation local authority officials are visiting the farm on which this herd is kept."

Mr Smith said: "There's a live investigation going on at the moment and, whilst we have got a first-class cattle tracing scheme, what we don't know is precisely how many embryos have been imported into the country."

He said such a situation was "inevitable", adding: "It's a bit like the police being there and us expecting no crime. However good the system is, it relies on the honesty of those people participating.

"It's impossible for us to stand by each animal and watch it through each phase of its life cycle."

He said that if somebody has an animal which has come from a cloned source they are supposed to notify the FSA.

Peter Stevenson, chief policy adviser at campaign group Compassion in World Farming, said: "Cloning is at the sharp end of the inhumane selective breeding processes that are often involved in the intensive production of meat and dairy products.

"Many animals suffer in the pursuit of higher yields because they are

being stretched to the limits of their physical capacity."