Cloned cow milk scandal rocks FSA

The Food Standards Agency has said it will investigate claims that milk produced from a cloned cow's offspring is on sale in the UK.

According to reports, an ‘unnamed British diary farmer' has said he used milk from a cow ‘produced from a cloned parent'. The FSA has said it had not approved the milk, labelled a "novel food", and would investigate.

All foodstuffs produced from cloned animals must get approval before being sold, the agency stated. An FSA spokeswoman said, "Since 2007 the FSA interpretation of the law has been that meat and products from clones and their offspring are considered novel foods and would therefore need to be authorised before being placed on the market.

"As the UK authority responsible for accepting novel food applications the agency has not received any applications relating to cloning and no authorisations have been made.

"The agency will of course investigate any reports of unauthorised novel foods entering the food chain."

The story was broken when the International Herald Tribune reported that an unnamed farmer was selling milk from a cow bred from a clone. The farmer said he was selling embryos from the same cow to breeders in Canada.

Health concerns

While there are said to be no health risk to humans, the production of milk from the offspring of cloned animals raises a number of economic, ethical and welfare issues.

Among the scientific community, it is held that there should be no health risk from consuming cow's milk. However the RSPCA says it is a bad idea and condemns it on animal welfare and ethical grounds.

"Cloning has huge potential to cause unnecessary pain, suffering and distress which cannot be justified by purely commercial benefits," a spokesman said.

"Food from cloned animals may seem a tasty option for some, but it leaves a distinctly bad taste in the mouth when it comes to animal welfare."

The RSPCA also stress the risk to biodiversity in reducing the variance in livestock populations - whereby, theoretically, a disease could wipe out an entire herd because all animals were equally susceptible to particular strains, when normally there would be varied immunity in any given herd.

The investigation continues.

 

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: