Published 29/03/2009

An overwhelming majority of Members of the European Parliament voted against the authorisation of food products from cloned animals and their offspring.

On 25 March 2009, the Parliament made it clear that they are opposed to the cloning of animals for food. In particular, they called for a new law that would ban the placing on the market of food from farm animals or their offspring.

This reinforces the European Parliament's overwhelming majority vote in September 2008 for a Resolution calling for a ban on cloning animals for food.

Cloning causes animal suffering

Around 50% of cloned farm animals die either shortly before birth or within a few days or weeks afterwards. Many are born with malformed lungs, kidneys or other essential organs.

The Scientific Opinion of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) shows that cloning causes severe health and welfare problems for both cloned animals and their surrogate dams. EFSA said: "The mortality rate of clones is considerably higher than in sexually produced animals" and there is "evidence of increased morbidity of clones compared with sexually produced animals."

The European Group on Ethics (EGE) in Science and New Technologies have said that it "does not see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring."

Cloning is also arguably against the EU's own law on the protection of animals kept for farming purposes.

An opinion poll also showed that a very high percentage of European consumers do not like cloning for human consumption.

We believe that farm animals should not and need not suffer

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