SP Euro-MP calls for ban on cloned meat
SP Euro-MP calls for ban on cloned meat
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has demonstrated it: a study by the body charged with ensuring that food sold to the public in the twenty-seven EU member states is safe to eat has shown that a significant proportion of cloned animals experience adverse effects. Despite this, the European Commission is trying to sneak recognition of meat from cloned animals as an approved foodstuff in through the back door. The Commission wants to use the new EU Regulation on Novel Foods to add cloned meat to Europe's menu.
Underhand
This behaviour amounts to an underhand way of trying to make clones more acceptable from a legal point of view. There are, in fact, many reasons to object to cloned animal products. Aside from the suffering of the animals themselves and the ethical arguments involved, it is questionable whether the public is eagerly anticipating eating pork chops from identical pigs. There remain numerous uncertainties regarding the safety of cloned meat. And lastly, the social debate on these issues has hardly begun.
"I call on the European Commission to come forward without delay with proposals for a ban on the cloning of animals for the production of food," said SP Euro-MP Kartika Liotard during today's plenary meeting of the European Parliament in Brussels. "I am incensed by the fact that the Commission has even had the audacity to propose that food from cloned animals should be recognised and approved."