EDINBURGH – A farmer whose bull entered the food chain despite being the offspring of a cloned cow insisted yesterday he had done nothing wrong.
Callum Innes bought two bulls produced by the cloned cow from a farm in Shropshire.
An investigation has now been launched by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) after it confirmed that one of the bulls had been eaten. The other was stopped from entering the food chain.
Mr Innes’s son Steven, who helps run the farm at Auldearn, near Inverness, confirmed that the bulls were bought in February 2008. He said in a statement read outside the farm: “We investigated whether this was legal at the time and understood that there was no issue.
“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.”
Farming leaders also insisted that Mr Innes had investigated issues surrounding “food chain rules” before acquiring the bulls.
Under European law, foodstuffs including milk produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and gain authorisation before they are marketed.
The FSA said it had neither made any authorisations nor been asked to do so. But National Farmers Union Scotland insisted Mr Innes attempted to clarify the situation beforehand.
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.
The FSA confirmed that one of them “will have been eaten” while the other was stopped from entering the food chain.
The bulls sired 100 cows at the farm, whose milk has not entered the food chain, Highland Council said. Their future will be decided by the FSA. The council is working with the FSA and sent two animal health officers to the farm yesterday to speak with Mr Innes.
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 had been imported into Britain.
But FSA chief executive Tim Smith insisted there were no health risks associated with eating meat or drinking milk from the descendants of cloned cows.
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. – (PA)