The European Parliament reaffirmed  yesterday the opposition of meat and milk produced from cloned animals, asking the Commission to stand for a legislative proposal to explicitly ban food from cloned animals and their descendants in a report of a Leftist member of the Parliament.

This position comes already from a precedent resolution of 2008 on the suspension on all sales of food derived from cloning, but if EU member states refuse the Parliament's approach, a conciliation procedure will be established to get a compromise. The EP had also demanded before the suspension of nano-sized ingredients until it was proved that there were no risks to health.

The responsible for the legislative proposal, Kartika Liotard from the group European United Left-Nordic Green Left, said that "an obvious majority in the European Parliament is ethically opposed to the industrial production of cloned meat for food. Cloned animals suffer unreasonably highly from illnesses, malformations and premature death. MEPs and citizens are calling the European commission to create suitable regulation in this matter for years."

In 2008, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that the health and welfare of a significant percentage of clones had been found to be below par.

 The dutch MEP added after the vote that "We will continue to press the Commission to produce a separate legislative proposal to prohibit food from clones and their offspring in order to protect consumers and uphold environmental and animal health standards."