Would you eat meat from cloned animals?

I have been asked this question a number of times over the last few days, "Would you eat meat from cloned animals?"

It is a question that I find very difficult to answer. Do I answer in a scientific way or an emotional way because I am faced with two very different instincts? The Telegraph carries a report which addresses this issue and makes interesting reading. The US government made a ruling in January this year, that food from cloned animals can be   produced and sold because it is unlikely to affect human health.

In our risk adverse society we emotionally don't like the word "unlikely" and scientifically we want to quantify the risk to as many decimal places as possible. Food Standards Agency research has concluded that the vast majority of those interviewed were against its introduction and   probably wouldn't buy it if it appeared in supermarkets.

This pre-supposes a major factor - that we can actually trace cloned animals from source through the supply chain to a finished product on the shelf such as a meat pie or ready meal and that the finished product will be labelled "Meat produced from animals that were cloned".

Andrew Wadge, the Food Standards Agency Chief Scientist wrote a post about cloned animals in the food chain back in January. I am sure this debate will continue over the coming months and years, but the industry must engage and take the consumer with them, if they don't then they risk alienating and turning off the people they expect to eat the product.