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The few studies that have been carried out on meat and milk from cloned animals have shown that it's no different nutritionally to that of normal animals. But the feeling among food safety agencies in Europe is that there hasn't been enough research, and until more is known cloned food should be treated as a novel food. That requires any supplier to get specific authorisation to sell produce from cloned animals.

The FSA began an investigation after claims that a British farmer had admitted selling milk from a cow that was the offspring of a clone. That inquiry is still going on – although the UK dairy industry body, DairyCo, has said it is "confident" no such milk entered the human food chain.

However, on Tuesday, the agency issued a statement saying it had identified two bulls born in the UK from embryos harvested from a cloned cow in the US. Both bulls had been slaughtered - meat from one of them had been eaten.

American biotechnology companies are cloning animals that give high yields of meat and milk - to use as breeding stock. As the industry grows in the US it'll be hard for food safety authorities to police the export of embryos from cloned animals to farmers in Europe.

Pallab Ghosh, Â鶹Éç News, London