A frozen calf embryo that was flown to Britain and implanted in a surrogate mother on a Midlands farm has raised questions about the policing of the country’s food sources.

Dundee Paradise, the daughter of a Holstein dairy cow cloned in the United States, was flown to the UK in a batch of five frozen embryos last year and delivered in December. Last night, however, the Government admitted that it knew nothing about the arrival of the embryos or the calf’s birth.

Critics said that this showed how easy it was for farmers to rear cloned animals and then put them into the British food system.

Three years ago the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs rejected advice from its own officials to create a regime to monitor attempts to introduce clone farming or genetically modified animals, which producers believe will lead to higher yields. Critics of this method said that the Government’s ignorance of Dundee Paradise’s arrival would help to destroy confidence in British food.

A Defra spokeswoman said that the department was following EU rules, which did not require it to differentiate between cloned and normal embryos.

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