Thursday, August 5, 2010

England: Meat from two cloned bulls illegally entered the human food chain

Beef was sold in May and has been eaten, says FSA
Severin Carrell and James Meikle
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010

Beef from a second bull bred from a clone has illegally entered the human food chain and has been eaten in the last few months, safety officials have disclosed.

The Food Standards Agency said it had now traced all four cows and four bulls that were bred in Britain from embryos harvested from a cloned cow in the US, as the controversy over the use of cloned animals intensified.

The agency discovered that meat from two of the bulls has been eaten while farm inspectors were still trying to establish whether milk from two of the cows had been sold for human consumption. While there was no known risk to human health, the agency said meat from the second bull, called Parable, was sold for food in May. The FSA has not specified the farm the animal came from.

As the agency's investigation into the illegal sale of cloned milk and meat gathered pace, an investigation by The Guardian has found that the Scottish dairy farm which sold cloned beef has twice been fined for breaching strict rules on the identification and movement of cattle.

The family owned firm of Callum Innes & Sons, Scotland's largest breeder of pedigree Holstein dairy cows, was first docked £1,480 after being caught failing to properly identify cattle in 2006 and then nearly £9,400 for failing to register the movement of cattle in 2009.

It emerged yesterday that the farm, known as Newmeadows Holsteins near Nairn east of Inverness, had sold meat from one of its two bulls in July last year. Their second bull was slaughtered later last month but the FSA stopped its meat being sold for human consumption.

The FSA is now investigating whether the Innes's and a second farm, which the agency has refused to name, have breached safety rules which prevent the sale of untested "novel" foods.

But it is now expected that 97 Holstein dairy cows the Innes's bred from both bulls may have to be slaughtered because their milk cannot legally be sold.

The FSA is adamant that it is illegal to sell meat and milk from the offspring of clones under the European commission's novel food regulations, despite claims by commission officials that the UK was over-reacting.

Tim Smith, the FSA chief executive, said that while there was no scientific evidence that they posed any risk to human health, there had so far been no official safety tests to confirm this and food suppliers needed authorisation before selling them.

The Innes's insisted today they had followed all the correct procedures on registering both bulls; a claim supported yesterday by the National Farmers Union Scotland and the Holstein UK breeders association, which registers their pedigree and records their entire breeding history.

The NFUS and Holstein UK said the fault lay with the cattle tracing scheme, the "passport" which has been given to 10m cows at birth. It was introduced in the wake of the BSE or "mad cow" crisis in 1998. The passport does not require farmers to record the fact an animal was from cloned stock.

Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, admitted that was a loophole which needed tightening up. "If we need to change our procedures to ensure full traceability of cloned cattle and their offspring in the UK, then we will work with our European partners to ensure that this happens," she said.

Steven Innes, Callum Innes's son, said today the fines paid by the farm were small penalties for technical breaches of the cattle registration scheme which were entirely unrelated to the controversy over the cloned bulls.

He told The Guardian they were "completely innocent" of any wrongdoing with the two bulls, called Dundee Paratrooper and Dundee Perfect, and said they expected to be cleared of breaking the law on novel foods within the next two weeks.

He said they had known the bulls were from a cloned cow before they bought them in February 1998, but had first checked it was legal to buy them with Holstein UK. They also contacted the local agriculture department office before bringing the bulls to Nairn, and then openly listed them as from a clone with the government's cattle registration office.

"We've been very open about the bulls, and we've told people clearly what they were and what their heritages was, and have never hidden it," he said. The local abattoir also accepted both bulls as being fit for human consumption.

"I think there has been a severe cock-up," he said. "There has been a breakdown in communications between all the different departments. I can't point the finger at anybody. I don't think anyone on their own is to blame."

Innes added that the fate of the 97 calves, which are currently too young to produce milk, would be decided "over the next couple of weeks". He confirmed it was highly unlikely now that their milk would be sold. "If there's any doubt at all, we will not try to put anything into the food chain, milk or otherwise," he said.

Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of microbiology at the University of Aberdeen, said meat and milk from cloned cows posed no health risks. "It is perfectly safe," he said. "They are just the same as their parents from the genetic point of view so there's no problem there."

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