Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-02-Speech-2-518"
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"en.20080902.36.2-518"2
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"Mr President, I should like very much to welcome Commissioner Vassiliou here this evening to listen to our oral question, especially at this late hour.
We also have to consider the problems that occur not only on the animal welfare side but also in the gene pool of animals – and this is a farming aspect also. Take the Holstein Friesian – it is thought that there are only about 50 strains of the Holstein Friesian. If we start cloning bulls and the heifer from a cloned bull is then put back on to the offspring, so the same father is used, then we will create an even tighter gene pool. There are then problems with disease and with genetics being carried over to those offspring. Therefore, we need to make sure there is hybrid vigour.
The industry itself cannot explain why a cloned animal has the cell of the parent – an older cell. Therefore, again, there is the risk of producing an animal that is not as strong and as healthy.
Therefore, I call on the Commission to submit proposals prohibiting the cloning of animals for the food supply and the placing of cloned animals on the market in meat and dairy products.
When we deal with cloning, it is not only a case of food safety, but also we in Europe believe that, under the common agricultural policy, we are producing food to a very high standard and also to a very high welfare standard. The problems with cloning concern not only the welfare of animals but also consumer confidence in food that may come from cloned animals.
You only have to look across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States of America to see how to stop cloned animals from entering the food chain. For instance, if a cloned bull is worth EUR 1 000 at the end of its life to go into the food chain, then the people who have bred that bull have to put up a bond, which may be worth EUR 3 000, and when they destroy that animal and make sure that it does not go into the food chain, they get the bond back. It is quite a simple way of keeping cloned animals out of the food chain.
I think we have to take this matter very seriously and I would urge the Commissioner to look at this again.
I will go through some of the problems with cloning, especially from a welfare point of view. Cloning entails serious health and welfare problems for clones and their surrogate dams; animal health problems come from invasive techniques required to produce a clone; there is the suffering of surrogate dams which carry cloned foetuses, and high levels of ill health and mortality in early life for cloned animals.
The OIE Scientific and Technical Review identified that only 6% of cloned embryos resulted in healthy, long-term surviving clones.
The EFSA report also points out an increased proportion of pregnancy failure and disorders in surrogate dams of cloned embryos. These disorders and the large size of clones make caesareans more frequent in cattle carrying clones than in conventional pregnancy. Mortality and morbidity is higher in clones than in sexually-produced animals; the welfare of both surrogate dam and clone can be affected.
On the ethics side, the European Group on Ethics has doubts as to whether cloning animals for food supply is ethically justified. It also does not see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring.
If you look into the figures of what has happened when animals are cloned, cloned calves are often 25% heavier than normal, leading to a painful birth; 25% of cows pregnant with clones at day 120 of gestation develop hydroallantois. Reports in 2003 show only 13% of embryos planted in surrogate dams result in calves delivered at full term; only 5% of all cloned embryos transferred into recipient cows have survived. EFSA’s opinion cites a study where out of 2 170 cattle receiving embryos only 106 live births occurred – 4.9% – and only 82 survived more than two days."@en1
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