Agricultural and Farming News: EU Calls for ban on cloned meat from USA
Article by Rachel
The European Union currently imports around two billion pounds (sterling) of beef and thirty million pounds (sterling) of semen every year from America. Recent agricultural news reports state that animal cloning is widespread and unregulated in the United States and therefore imported meat and semen could be coming from first generation cloned animals. It has been stated in several farming news reports that European Members of Parliament want a complete ban on cattle meat and semen from American until it can be proven that the products have not come from cloned livestock.
European farmers have to abide by tough regulations and rules for the production of meat and raising of livestock but there are few regulations to control the import of meat and semen from outside the EU. Under current EU rules meat products can only be sold for human consumption if they are from third generation or later offspring from cloned animals. Farming news reports state that in a recent discussion MEP’s agreed all imports into the European Union should also be subject to the same rules.
Some agricultural news publications are calling for a complete ban on all imports of meat and semen from countries such as the USA, Brazil and Argentina until it can be proven that these meat products do not come from cloned animals and adhere to EU standards. However, as these countries do not regulate animal cloning it could be very difficult to verify any imports.
It has been reported in various farming news that in effect European ministers have voted for a complete ban on meat and semen imports from outside the European Union and the ramifications of this could be huge, possibly triggering a trade war similar to the ‘banana war’ but much worse.
An alternative being mentioned in the farming news is the relaxation of controls on EU producers of livestock products or labelling all imported meat with a stamp saying ‘it could come from a cloned animal’. Although the latter could be seen as a hidden trade barrier.