Clone, Clone on the Range (Where the Deer and the Antelope Play)

There has been an incredible fuss about the possibility that meat from 2 imported embryos of cloned (an important note is that these are not GM animals) US bulls may have made it into the UK food chain (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10859866). The story seems to have extrapolated from an initial claim that milk from cloned cows was being sold to people (largely in Scotland) in this country (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299509/Cloned-cows-milk-sale-Britain-Investigation-dairy-farmers-admission.html). The events seem to be being used to attack the Food Standards Agency (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100049740/cloned-cattle-in-the-human-food-chain-officialdom-talks-a-lot-of-bull/), a body set up to protect consumers from potential food problems. There is clearly absolutely no change that the materials from cloned animals would be any different from bovines reared in an entirely traditional way. Suggestions that there might be welfare problems associated with such animals are probably real but much could be said about many farming practices. The welfare problems (in terms of the numbers of animals involved are also currently tiny) and it looks (from the US experience) that cloning is here to stay in farming. I personally feel that the Scots are more endangered by the deep-fried Marsbar.