29/03/2011

European Union talks were abandoned this morning (29^th March) after negotiations became bogged down in disagreement. Negotiation on overwhelmingly popular new legislation, covering bans and mandatory labelling of food from cloned animals and their offspring, ended in stalemate. All-night talks between the EU Council and European Parliament ended at 7am with each side blaming the other after the two failed to come to an agreement.

The most contentious subject was the treatment of the offspring of cloned animals; the two sides could not reach an agreement on this despite coming to an accord over banning food from first-generation cloned animals. As such, the 27 EU states’ novel food regulations remain as they were in 1997; the law requires special authorization for food from cloned animals, but there is still no outright ban.

Bart Staes, a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, said, "[The European Council's] intransigence on regulating food from the descendants of clones is wrongheaded, as it is ultimately these descendants, and not the original clones, that will be used for food production. It is little more than window-dressing to ban cloning in Europe but allow the import of reproductive material from clones and selling food from the offspring of clones,"

The European Parliament’s stance in pushing for a ban is in keeping with the vast majority of the European public; a recent Gallop survey of 250,000 Europeans recorded overwhelming opposition to animal cloning for food production, with 58% of those polled saying that such cloning should never be justified. The grounds on which cloning is opposed are ethical, animal welfare and health related. Many animals die in the process of cloning and scientists agree that the health and welfare of a significant proportion of cloned animals is seriously affected and mortality is considerably higher in clones than animals created by sexual reproduction.

EC failing to defend European values

The Commission has been accused of repeating the arguments of the US lobby and failing to defend European values. The Commission said the level of traceability that would be required to ensure the food supply chain did not contain food form cloned animals and their offspring was “unfeasible” and would result in a ban on all imported meat, which would contravene trade rules.

However, many disagree with this view; Sonja van Tichelen, Director of the Eurogroup for Animals explained, “traceability is achievable and is already a requirement for food safety so there is no need to ban all imports.”

Gianni Pittella, of the European Parliament delegation, and the Parliament's Novel Foods Rapporteur, Kartika Liotard issued a joint statement today in which they said, “We made a huge effort to compromise but we were not willing to betray consumers on their right to know whether food comes from animals bred using clones. Since European public opinion is overwhelmingly against cloning for food, a commitment to label all food products from cloned offspring is a bare minimum.”