EU talks on how to deal with food from cloned animals break down

TALKS within the European Union have broken down over how to deal with food from cloned animals, sending EU proposals on the sale of new types of foods back to the drawing board after three years of debate.

Following all-night negotiations in Brussels, EU lawmakers were ready to drop their demand for a ban on the sale of food from the conventionally bred offspring of cloned animals, in return for mandatory labelling for all such products.

But EU governments rejected the compromise and said it risked dragging the 27-nation bloc into a “full blown trade war” with countries that already export food products derived from the young of cloned animals, such as the United States.