Blame game in Brussels after EU cloned food talks collapse

Mar 29, 2011, 15:20 GMT

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

Blame was also cast on the European Commission, which had mediated between the European Parliament and the EU Council, amid allegations that it had raised concerns over how labeling requirements could affect trade.

Products from cloned animals - including sperm used to create offspring - are believed to come mostly from countries outside the EU, such as the United States.

'There was a lot of pressure from the US on the commission, we heard,' the parliament's novel food rapporteur, Kartika Liotard, said. 'We heard again and again that this was going to trigger a whole trade war ... That's not the sort of thing a mediator would do, that's what something would do with an agenda.'

The negotiations were part of a wider effort to introduce rules on food from the offspring of cloned animals, which the EU currently lacks - in part because the science of cloning is in its infancy.

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.

In a 2008 survey, eight out of 10 EU citizens had said that they would want special labelling if food products from offspring were sold in shops.

'We feel that the consumer should have a free choice when it comes to whether or not they consume meat from cloned animals,' Liotard, a left-wing Dutch politician, said. 'The problem is that we don't know what's on our plate.'

After backing down from an initial demand for a ban on offspring products, the parliament insisted that all food derived from offspring must be labelled.

That became the major sticking point in the negotiations, with the council suggesting that such a measure would not be feasible.

'The council does not want to mislead consumers by agreeing rules that cannot be enforced,' it said. 'The solution must also comply with the international trade rules that the EU ... has signed. The council does not want to provoke a trade conflict.'

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

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

EU Health Commissioner John Dalli pointed to that caveat when asked by reporters about the trade concerns.

'We would do an impact assessment to ensure that whatever we do is reasonable and honours the EU's international commitments,' he said.

Dalli said he remained 'convinced that the only way to guarantee a good deal for EU consumers and food business operators is to deliver a proposal ... that is both practicable and enforceable, including on the issue of labelling.'

It is nevertheless a 'great pity' that the talks had broken down, he added, saying it paves the way for such products to continue to enter the bloc unregulated.

The commission has agreed to draft its own rules on cloning, but that will not happen until 2013, Liotard said. In the meantime, the EU will revert back to its 1997 regulation on novel foods, which does not touch upon cloning.

'The present situation where there is no control at all on cloning techniques or on clones will be the rule again in Europe,' Dalli said. 'It could have been a situation of a regulatory regime, which I think would have put us in a much better position.'

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.'

Parties on all sides of the debate did agree on one thing - that the breakdown of the cloned food talks was regrettable because it also put an end to other agreements included in the so-called Novel Foods Regulation, for instance in the areas of food produced through nanotechnology, traditional foods and food innovations.

'Now the question is what to do,' said the parliament's top negotiator on the issue, Gianni Pittella, an Italian in the Socialists and Democrats grouping. 'We've got a legislative void.'

Read more about EU Health

Read more about Food