Bid to ban cloned foods in Europe collapses

A handout picture from last October shows cloned colt BS Nandubay Bicentenario (left) and its mother Perdida Puestera on a farm in Baradero, Argentina. An effort to ban cloned foods from reaching supermarket shelves in Europe collapsed on Tuesday after EU states and the parliament failed to agree a law to control the industry.

AFP - An effort to ban cloned foods from reaching supermarket shelves in Europe collapsed on Tuesday after EU states and the parliament failed to agree a law to control the industry.

Although both sides agree on banning meat directly derived from cloned animals, government officials and Euro MPs clashed over regulating foods produced from the offspring of clones.

Hungary, which chairs the rotating European Union presidency, accused the parliament of "political grandstanding" after a 12-hour round of all-night talks broke down without agreement.

Parliament wants strict labels to be slapped on meat from offspring of clones, but EU states argue that the proposal was unrealistic and would lead to a "full-blown trade war" with nations that produce such foods such as Argentina, Brazil or the United States.

Hungarian rural development minister Sandor Fazekas said the parliament proposal was a "misleading, unfeasible 'solution' that in practice would have required drawing a family tree for each slice of cheese or salami."

It could take "several years" for the EU's executive Commission to come up with a new proposal, the Hungarian presidency said.

The breakdown effectively leaves in place 14-year-old rules that do not prevent the sale of food from clones.

"It is deeply frustrating that (the European) Council (of governments) would not listen to public opinion and support urgently needed measures to protect consumer and animal welfare interests," Euro MPs said in a statement.

"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," said lawmakers Gianni Pittella and Kartika Liotard.

"Since European public opinion is overwhelmingly against cloning for food, a commitment to label all food products from cloned offspring is a bare minimum."

Euro MPs originally wanted a total ban on food from the offspring of clones, but they later proposed a labelling system to show consumers the animal's history.

But EU states were only willing to put such labels on fresh beef.

French Euro MP Corine Lepage said some states, including Britain, were willing to see a breakdown "because it is in their interest to be able to import cloned semen without any controls."