Two cloned cows’ offspring went into food chain

MEAT from a second offspring of a cloned cow has entered the food chain, the Food Standards Agency said last night.

It had traced all of the calves born in Britain from eight embryos from a cloned cow in the US.

It confirmed meat from a second bull, Parable, had entered the food chain.

Parable, which was born in May 2007 and slaughtered on May 5, 2010, follows confirmation meat from another of the bulls, Dundee Paratrooper, entered the chain in 2009.

The FSA said meat from both animals will have been eaten, but stressed there was no evidence of a safety risk.

Yesterday the FSA said a third bull, Dundee Perfect, was slaughtered on July 27 this year and its meat prevented from entering the food chain.

The FSA also confirmed last night one of the four cows, Dundee Paradise, remained part of a dairy herd on a British farm, but there was no evidence milk from the animal had entered the food chain. The agency believed two other cows were being kept as part of dairy herds but it had been unable to confirm if their milk had entered the food chain.

Of the eight calves, four of each sex, one male and one female died at around one month old. No meat or products from the animal had entered the food chain. The FSA is trying to trace offspring from the eight animals, but added they would be too young to be milked or used for breeding.

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.

Under European law, foodstuffs including milk produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and gain authorisation before being marketed. The FSA said it had neither made any authorisations nor been asked to do so.

Earlier yesterday the owner of one of the bulls which entered the food chain insisted he had done nothing wrong. Farmer Callum Innes bought two bulls produced by the cloned cow from a farm in Shropshire.

Innes’s son Steven, who helps run the farm at Auldearn, near Inverness, confirmed the bulls were bought in February 2008.

He said in a statement read outside the farm: “We have acted in good faith throughout and we’ve been fully compliant with the relevant authorities’ wishes and shall continue to be fully co-operative in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible.”