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Cloned farming claims under investigation

Claims of a cloned farming in the UK are being investigated, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.

This starts because the Daily Mail reported that a calf of a cloned mother had been born in a unnamed farm in the Midland last December 2^nd . The problem is that de Defra, which gathers information about cloned embryos from breed societies, didn’t knew about this calf’s existence

A spokeswoman said: "Any cloned embryo that enters the country will be identified in the consignment's accompanying pedigree documentation. The documents will be checked and noted by the official veterinarian at the board of entry point and will subsequently be recorded with the relevant breed society."

Cloned farming methods can create cows with better milk production, with 70 liters of milk a day, 30% to 40% more that “normal bred” cows, but the methods prompted alarm at possible dangers of what some call “Frankenstein farming”

This because this could result in milk and meat of these animals being sold in a unregulated way to the consumers

Dundee Paradise, the new calf, was born after the British farm bought frozen embryos from a cow that had been cloned by the US biotech firm Cyagra Clone, created using cells from the ear of a champion Holstein dairy cow

In the US where around 150 cloned dairy cows and 200 clones pigs created, principally used for breeding bigger, more productive livestock and high cost embryos. But the problem is that cloned offspring tend to die young and the area needs more research. According to a Poll, around two-thirds of the US public had concerns about eating food for a cloned livestock

Also new calves from other embryos, carried with Dundee Paradise, were expected to be born in the next few weeks, it was reported.

Late last month, the FDA declared food from cloned livestock to be safe for human consumption, but said the government needed time to assess public opinion on whether to allow sales of such products without special labelling.

Dolly the sheep, the world's first mammal clone, was born on a British farm in 1997; she died young in 2003 from a lung disease.

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