Anyone for a spot of cloned curry?

Have we really arrived at an era where we’ll accept anything?

Last week it was revealed that cloned meat entered the European food chain as long ago as 2009.

This particular incident was discovered in Scotland. Two bulls born in the UK from embryos harvested in the US were slaughtered, and the meat from one sold for human consumption.

According to the UK’s Food Standards Authority (FSA) the meat was almost certainly eaten, probably in the form of a pie filling, or burger.

In a curiously unsettling statement, the agency went on to say there is “no evidence that consuming products from healthy clones, or their offspring, poses a food safety risk” – but at the same time, they justify the fact that meat from the second slaughtered bull “has been stopped from entering the food chain” because “it would need to be authorised before being placed on the market”.

Why, one wonders, would anyone need to “authorise” meat that posed no food safety risks?

The answer is that no-one can say for sure what consumption of cloned meat will do to any of us. There simply cannot have been adequate research. Think about it: how many people can you imagine signing up to be fed a consistent diet of cloned meat, in order to see how they fared in x-number of years?!

It’s true, in 2005, the US “concluded a 5-year study saying cloned produce was safe” – but since then, there’s been a welter of information and concern to the contrary. And how many of us really believe a word that comes out of the US, anyway?

As controversy spreads throughout Europe - with unnamed EU officials admitting it is “probable that thousands of cheese and meat products on sale in British supermarkets have come from animals that were derived from clones” - we, the innocent consumers are left with a very nasty taste in our mouths.

As one blog writer put it: “This all gets more and more ridiculous . . . I’m going to live on the moon where I’ll eat nothing but uncloned cheese. Goodbye.”

If only it were that simple!