Hysteria over cloned cows story

Then came the hysteria over cloned cows, and how milk, and then meat from these animals entered the food chain. Let's look at the latter.

There are no cloned animals in this country, that needs to be made clear, but some descendants of clones have been bought by a very few dairy farmers. EU regulation does not allow cloned animals or cloned embryos to be brought in, but the progeny of cloned animals are allowed to be brought in and registered.

There is no difference in terms of food safety according to scientists, or composition, between the milk and meat produced from healthy animals whether they are cloned or conventionally bred.

These animals in the news were bought as embryos, and implanted in surrogate cows, and were subsequently born and reared in this country. Buying embryos is an expensive business, and only a very few dairy farmers, usually dairy cow breeders, would get involved in this activity.

Typically, an embryo would cost around 1200, and when you compare it to a semen straw at nearer 12 the point is made I think.

I know a few farmers who have involved themselves in embryo transfer, and some of them did so in order to try and increase the percentage of a very good cow family in the herd.

We all have really good cows in our herds, and if only we could increase the numbers of these good cows that milk well, last for many years, hardly see the vet; it would make life easier, more profitable and greatly improve animal welfare.

However, it is just too expensive and the success rate is not good enough. Some do still import very valuable embryos, and progeny from such animals are very valuable indeed.

If it's a male embryo, the bull is reared and hundreds of cows can be inseminated with this bull, improving the herd. Only the very best of the very best were cloned in the USA, with a price for doing so initially of around 80,000 per embryo, but that did halve as time went on, but it is not for the faint hearted!

The problem is that cloning cows has not worked. The progeny do have the identical 'dna', but they don't even look the same, never mind perform as well as envisaged. Nature does of course involve itself in a bit of cloning with identical twins, and scientists have attempted to replicate this in the laboratory. Pets are cloned in the USA, and I don't know if they are identical or not, but I doubt they behave the same as the original.

When these dairy embryos were imported, Defra were notified, as were Holstein UK the breeding society. Imported embryos are given a code, and cloned embryos are given a different code; there should be no mystery as to where they are.

Defra issued cattle passports for these animals, and it seemed that all was well. Our old friend the Food Standard Agency then entered the fray this week. No one told us they said. Don't you love it when Government Departments work so well together?

The FSA seem to have 'gold-plated' EU regulations here (well there's a surprise!), and taken a different interpretation, stating that descendants of clones (which these are), should be treated as 'novel foods'.

That means that an application to the FSA needs to be made before milk or meat from such animals can enter the food chain. There is no communication anywhere that we can find, telling farmers what they should do in order to satisfy the FSA; so we asked them.

Answer. There was a great deal of publicity in 2007, when the FSA made public 'their' interpretation of the Novel Food Directive; the farmer should have known!

I take that as an admission that no direct communication was made by the FSA on the matter. However, had the progeny been registered with the FSA, would the milk and meat be allowed into the food chain? Answer from the FSA. 'We don't know'. Can this approach be enforced? What about all the bull semen that comes into the country? There is no marking on that to show origin that I am aware of.

Tim Smith, CEO of the FSA however has been on the radio and in the media stressing (quite rightly) that there is no risk whatsoever in the milk and meat which has entered the food-chain.

That does not make it right of course and I can tell you that beef and dairy farmers are absolutely furious that this has happened, and that their produce has been affected by this media storm. I feel very sorry for the dairy farmers involved, who seem to have done nothing wrong, but found themselves victims of poor co-ordination, communication and legislation by Government departments. One has around 100 animals that could be destroyed. I also understand that one farm has been attacked by animal right extremists, which is regrettable.

Of course there are ethical and moral issues here, and they should be properly debated and discussed. There are some animal welfare concerns with cloning (greatly exaggerated of course by the single-issue groups), and if it has failed commercially, perhaps it will quietly disappear. However, this country is not the only one in Europe to have imported embryos from cloned animals in the USA.

Some very anti-GMO countries have milk going into their food chain from such animals (I am reliably informed), and if that is the case, meat as well. The Commission in Brussels has been very clear that there is absolutely no risk at all for consumers, and in the past I have heard them say that offspring of cloned animals should be treated as normal animals; I expect that they are quietly seething at yet another Government cock-up in the UK. I know that we farmers all are.

Turning to wheat, we know that extreme weather conditions in Russia, the Ukraine (drought and fires), and Canada (very very wet) has affected yields in these major exporting countries.

A few rash political decisions such as the ban on exports announced by Putin last week, is all it takes for panic to set in, and then rice prices start to spike (despite a huge crop with excellent weather), which of course is the crop that feeds half the world.

Two months ago the market was factoring in another large Northern Hemisphere wheat crop and a third consecutive year of surplus, adding to the high world wheat stocks.

Adverse weather has of course changed this position, and the predicted global wheat crop has now been reduced by 35 million tonnes.

The drought in Russia is the worst for 130 years (what was going on back then?), and Russian grain forecasts have been reduced from 95mt '“ to 70mt. Eu wheat production is predicted to be 137.5mt, more or less the same as last year. Canada is down from 26.5mt to 20.9mt, which is significant.

The result of all this is that global stocks at the end will be 179.0mt, down from 193.0mt; the relatively small decline due to a very good harvest in the USA and a surplus in China of 6.9mt. We are still to see what Australia produces, but it's looking favourable and Argentina has a very good crop. There is enough to cover the problems this year, but not if it happens again next year.

There are huge amounts of speculative capital pushing prices up, with investors initially banking on another surplus, now scrambling to cover positions which has produced a tremendous spike in the market. Current prices are factoring in a significant risk premium, but prices are expected to ease, and of course it not nearly as tight as it was in 2007/08.

Higher wheat prices will bring more land into wheat, and that should calm everyone down a bit.