EU Fails to Agree on Cloning Regulations

Cutting-edge technologies such as embryo transfers, artificial insemination and even cloning are used in the United Arab Emirates to breed camels, employed as desert transport since ancient times. (Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)

All-night talks between the European Parliament and European Council to update regulations on Novel Foods—which include labeling foods with byproducts of cloned animals or their offspring—ended without agreement on Monday.

The lack of agreement means new regulations may not be put in place for several years.

EU Consumer Commissioner John Dalli lamented the failure to end the deadlock. “This was the pity of not coming to an agreement, because the present situation—where there is no control at all on cloning techniques or clones—will be again the rule in Europe," Dalli was quoted in The Scotsman as saying.

A poll in 2008 found that 58 percent of Europeans are against consuming products or the offspring of cloned animals.

Novel Foods are those “derived from new technological processes,” were not widely consumed in Europe before 1997.

Genetically-modified foods are regulated separately in the EU.