Originally published April 7 2011
European politicians betray public by sabotaging efforts to regulate cloned food
by Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Europeans will soon be summoned to unlabeled cloned meat and milk products at their local supermarkets, thanks to efforts led by Caroline Spelman, UK Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, according to a recent report in the Daily Mail. Despite widespread public opposition to cloned animal food, Spelman and others blocked European Commission (EC) efforts to either ban or at least properly label cloned food.
The report states that most Members of Parliament (MEP) continue to support a complete ban on cloned animal food. And if that is not a possibility, they are willing to compromise and at least require proper labeling so consumers know what they are purchasing. But a few bad apples have spoiled the bunch by sabotaging talks regarding the issue and stalling the passage of any meaningful regulatory intervention.
"It is deeply frustrating that the Council would not listen to public opinion and support urgently needed measures to protect consumer and animal welfare interests," said Gianni Pittella and Kartika Liotard, two MEPs, in a joint statement.
"Parliament had overwhelmingly called for a ban on food from cloned animals and their descendants. 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. Since European public opinion is overwhelmingly against cloning for food, a commitment to label all food products from cloned offspring is a bare minimum."
Perhaps most disturbing is that the efforts to block both a ban and any sort of labeling were allegedly prompted out of a concern for how such measures would affect US trade interests. After all, the US continues to lead the world in both the acceptance and propagation of all things genetically-modified (GM), cloned, and otherwise tampered with.
Opponents of cloning say the technology is inhumane and unethical. However, it also produces animals that are sickly, deformed, and all-around damaged. A recent 13-year cloning project in New Zealand was canceled due to "unnecessary suffering," and the fact that roughly 90 percent of the cloned animals died during research trials (http://www.naturalnews.com/031573_cloning_an...).
Sources for this story include:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371...
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