Food from cloned animals or their offspring is to be scrutinised further for its safety before it will be allowed on sale in Britain or on the Continent.

Scientific experts and officials meeting in Brussels decided yesterday to refer the issue to the European Food Safety Authority in Palma for assessment. The working group was not prepared to rubber-stamp the conclusions of the US Food and Drug Administration, which gave the all-clear last month for the sale of meat or dairy products from cloned animals or their progeny.

The move to clarify whether food from such sources could go on commercial sale followed an urgent request from the UK’s Food Standards Agency after it was revealed this week that a cow from the embryo of a cloned cow in the US had been born on a Shropshire farm.

Consumer groups were concerned that food from such animals may soon appear in shops and not even require labelling. The EU will not make any decision about this now until it has new safety advice.

There is no urgency, no one having applied for marketing consent to sell such a novel food in the EU. It would be two years before milk from the Shropshire calf could go on sale. Industry sources doubt that this will ever happen.

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