Terry D. Etherton

I never cease to be amazed at the political process in Europe that keeps hindering adoption of safe and effective ag biotechnologies.  The latest folly occurred on July 7, 2010 when Members of the European Parliament (MEP) renewed their appeal for a ban on food from cloned animals when they voted on novel foods legislation.  At this time, there are no European Union (EU) rules to specifically allow or ban dairy products and meat from cloned animals.  While the Commission and Council wanted to have cloned meat covered by novel food rules that are already in place, MEPs instead called for new legislation to expressly prohibit the sale of meat from cloned animals and their descendants.

This decision is astonishing given that in July 2008 the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced its final scientific opinion that food from cloned cattle and pigs is safe, and there are no implications of animal cloning on the environment!

As I have written in previous blogs, this is another EU decision that is based on politics not science – more of the Luddites at the Gate phenomena that I have written about previously!

The decision the EU has reached is contrary to that reached by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Based on a risk assessment “Animal Cloning:  A Risk Assessment“, a report written by FDA scientists and issued in January 2008, FDA concluded that meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day.

The FDA Risk Assessment was based on an extensive evaluation of the available data that did not identify any evidence of any subtle hazards that might indicate food consumption risks in healthy clones of cattle, swine, or goats.

The idea that a trade dispute could ensue arises from the reality that the EU and the U.S. have reached opposite decisions about the safety of food from cloned animals.

The regulatory (and political) problem the EU is confronted with is that there is no way to identify a cloned animal or meat from a cloned animal by any laboratory assay!  Thus, it is not possible to verify whether meat of semen imported into the EU from the U.S. is from cloned animals!  The only way the Europeans can “verify” is to simply ban imports of all meat animal foods and semen from the United States.  If this decision is made by the EU, then the likelihood of a trade dispute escalates dramatically, and the trade war is launched!

“Effectively what that means is we’ve voted for a complete ban,” said Stevenson. “You can imagine this could trigger a trade war. I remember the banana war and the problems that caused, this could be 100 times bigger.”

The EU currently imports nearly £2 billion ($3.1 billion) of bovine meat and £30 million of semen from the U.S. every year.