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Posted by Andrew Wadge on July 30th 2008 in Science, safety and health

I was out of the office on Friday, but amused to see the press cuttings on whether cloned meat is safe.  The Daily Mail headline was 'EU food safety experts say No to cloned meat', whilst the Guardian went with 'Cloned meat safe to eat says EU's food agency'. 

Newspaper coverage of food issues is often entertaining, but who should the confused readers believe? 

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) advised there is no indication that differences exist in terms of food safety, between food products from healthy cattle and pig clones and their progeny, but noted that there are important concerns about animal health and welfare.  In the UK, we have already conducted research to find out consumer views on cloned animals, which showed that many people are strongly opposed to the use of cloned animals in food. 

EFSA has recognised that the risk assessment is subject to uncertainties, due to the number of studies that have been carried out, and has recommended that the database on edible products from cloned animals and their progeny should be extended, so it may be some time before the public is ready to accept cloned animals as a normal part of food production.

I previously blogged on cloned meat back in January this year.

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