A huge controversy in the UK in January 2007 linked the cloning company Smiddiehill and Humphreston Farm owned by father-and-son team Michael and Oliver Eaton (also owners of the large, Birmingham-based stone product business, BS Eaton) with a calf that was cloned from a cow in Canada. Despite their efforts to block the farm from view of the press, news cameras broadcast this as breaking news among many of the country's top news stations. Since then, this calf had been rumored to have been put down to protect the owners, the Eatons, from invasions of the press.