Shropshire bull was offspring of cloned cow

Meat from a bull reared in Shropshire and produced by a cloned cow entered the food chain last year and was eaten, the Food Standards Agency revealed today.

Reports said the animal, raised on a farm in Albrighton before being sold to a breeder, was slaughtered last summer and its meat put on sale to the public.

A second bull from another embryo produced by the same cloned mother and reared at the same farm before being sold for breeding, was killed last week.

Its meat was also destined for family dining tables until the FSA intervened and stopped its sale.

Both bulls were born of a cloned cow produced in the USA.

Embryos from the clone and a normal bull were frozen and flown to Britain to be implanted in host cows and born on the Albrighton farm.

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

The agency said officials had identified the two bulls born in the UK from a cloned cow in the US.

An FSA spokeswoman said: "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."

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

The FSA, the UK body responsible for the assessment of "novel foods" produced by cloned animals and their offspring, said it had neither made any authorisations nor been asked to do so.

An investigation was launched in the wake of claims a British farmer had admitted using milk in his daily production without labelling it as from the offspring of a cloned cow. The two Shropshire bulls came to light as a result of that investigation.

UK dairy industry body DairyCo said it was "confident" no milk from the offspring of cloned animals has entered the human food chain.

By Simon Hardy