Stalemate as Europe fails to agree cloning controls

MEAT and milk from cloned animals can continue to be sold and does not need to be labelled after member states and the European Parliament failed to agree new controls.

Over the past three years legislation on novel foods, which includes cloned animals, has been slowly making its way through EU institutions.

For fear of rows with the World Trade Organisation and under pressure from the US, member states including Ireland argued against controls over the produce from the offspring of cloned animals.

This has put them in direct conflict with the European Parliament, which initially insisted it wanted meat, milk and other products from cloned offspring banned. But at the 11th hour it settled for labelling.

Governments said it would be impossible to keep track of this and offered instead to gradually phase in labelling, but only for fresh beef.

They warned that anything else would bring them into conflict with the US, which exports such products.

The Hungarian rural development minister, Sandor Fazekas, who led the negotiations on behalf of the member states, accused the MEPs of “grandstanding”.

“They tried to push us to accept a misleading, unfeasible solution that, in practice, would have required drawing a family tree for each slice of cheese or salami,” said Mr Fazekas.

MEP Gianni Pittella, who led the negotiations on behalf of the parliament, said that measures regarding clone offspring were critical because clones are commercially viable only for breeding and not for food.

“No farmer would spend €100,000 on a cloned bull only to turn it into hamburgers,” he said.

The European Consumer Organisation was highly critical of the member states, accusing them of refusing all the proposals made by MEPs.

It said: “This is a shame. Europeans have been very clear in the studies carried out — they don’t want cloning to be used for food purposes and yet, clearly, they have not been listened to.”

Head of the consumer body BEUC, Monique Goyens, said: “Food products derived from cloning bring no benefits to consumers. Obviously consumers’ interest have been bypassed by the world trade concerns. Which interest were ministers representing exactly?”

European Health Commissioner John Dalli, who mediated between the member states and the MEPs, said it was a great shame that there was no agreement.

“The present situation, where there is no control at all on cloning techniques or on clones, will be the rule again in the EU,” he said.

The issue of cloning was the final part of new legislation dealing with new or novel foods and would have meant the EU was ahead of developments in the food industry.