EU food talks fail on labelling cloned animal products

Mar 29, 2011, 13:44 GMT

Brussels - The European Union's parliament and secretariat on Tuesday accused one another of failing to compromise, as negotiations over labeling food from the offspring of cloned animals fell apart after more than 11 hours of overnight talks.

The negotiations between the European Council and the European Parliament, mediated by the European Commission, were part of a wider effort to introduce rules on food from cloned animals, which the EU lacks - in part because the science of cloning is in its infancy.

The bloc will now revert back to its 1997 regulation on novel foods, which does not touch upon cloning, since the technology did not exist at the time.

'The present situation where there is no control at all on cloning techniques or on clones will be the rule again in Europe,' EU Health Commissioner John Dalli said, describing the breakdown of talks as a 'great pity.'

'It could have been a situation of a regulatory regime, which I think would have put us in a much better position,' he added.

But Dalli was also quick to note that 'science is telling us that there is no risk at all on meat from clones.' Answering a question from a reporter, he declared, 'I would eat cloned cattle.'

Cloned animals themselves are not typically processed for food, because of their high price tag. However, meat and milk from their offspring could be sold in European supermarkets without being identified as such.

'The council has exhausted every possibility trying to reach a balanced solution on novel foods, and in particular on the question of food from cloned animals,' the EU Council said in a statement.

It blamed the parliament's 'inability to compromise' on a demand that all food derived from the offspring of cloned animals be labelled, suggesting that the measure was not feasible.

'The council does not want to mislead consumers by agreeing rules that cannot be enforced,' it said.

Instead, the council had suggested to initially only label beef stemming from offspring, two years after the new regulations enter into force.

The labelling requirement would then have been extended to all other offspring products, 'subject to a commission report on the feasibility.'

Dalli pointed to that council proposal when asked by reporters about concerns that the labelling measure could break trade rules. Products from cloned animals come mostly from countries outside the EU, such as the United States.

The trade concerns were pounced on by several groups who had supported a ban on cloning.

'The commission ... during the whole legislative process has ignored the view of its own citizens and consumers while putting its trade relations with the US first,' the Eurogroup for Animals, an animal protection group, added in a statement.

The parliament, meanwhile, complained that the council 'would not listen to public opinion.'

'We made a huge effort to compromise, but we were not willing to betray customers on their right to know whether food comes from animals bred using clones,' the chair of the parliamentary delegation, Gianni Pittella, and its novel food rapporteur, Kartika Liotard, said in a joint statement.

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