Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-08-Speech-3-447"
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"en.20100908.19.3-447"2
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"Mr President, Mr Dalli, I am very much in favour of green genetic engineering, but cloning is something else altogether. The two things cannot be compared. Cloning involves cruelty to animals, as many of my fellow Members have already said. In the discussion which we had before the summer recess, I explained that only a fraction of animal clones are capable of surviving. Many of those which do initially survive go on to die at a very early age in great agony. They have deformed extremities and organs. They have weakened immune systems and are susceptible to disease. This leads to pain, suffering and an agonising death. Can we accept responsibility for this? If we really are in favour of animal welfare, should we be supporting methods of this kind? No, we should not. That is why we decided in July that we did not want cloned meat or the products of cloned animals. This is a consistent approach.
It is true that we know that the products of cloned animals and their offspring probably cause no damage to human health, and personally, I believe that they are suitable for human consumption, but there is no shortage of meat produced by conventional methods. So why should we make use of clones? It is completely unnecessary to treat animals cruelly. The people of Europe do not want this and they do not want these products. We do not need them. There is no argument for introducing cloned meat into the European Union.
This is why we want a clear regulation which applies specifically to cloned animals and their offspring. I want to see a ban on cloning and cloned products in the European Union and I believe that we can push this through. Of course, it must also apply to imports. I want to be sure that I am not being fobbed off with cloned meat on the quiet, because it is not labelled, as has just happened in Scotland. I do not believe that all meat can be traced back to its origins. This may be possible in the case of beef. However, it is not possible to tell whether there is a cloned animal in the ancestry of a specific pig, because of the amount of pork produced.
This is a fundamental, ethical question. Other Members have said that we need to deal with ethical issues, because we are responsible for them. This is, of course, a question of animal welfare, but it also concerns another issue. Experience shows, and I am a livestock farmer, I have studied this subject, that all the reproduction methods which have been proven to function in livestock rearing eventually find their way into human medicine. Therefore, we must ask ourselves today whether we want and are able to accept human cloning in the possibly not too distant future. I do not want to and I am not able to. Even if a clone was created of me to supply spare parts and, in future, was able to donate a vital organ for my use, I would still not want this to happen. I do not believe that this is an exaggerated horror story. I believe that this would be possible in the not too distant future if we were to permit cloning to take place.
Therefore, we urgently need a ban not only on cloning, but also on cloned animals and their offspring throughout the EU. I am not afraid of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). We can push this through. We do not have to imitate everything that the USA does, despite our transatlantic relationship."@en1
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