European officials said Monday that they want to bar cloned livestock, amid debate over a proposed ban that has been stalled since 2013.
“Consumers don’t want it, farmers don’t need it and the suffering of all animals involved is severe and extreme,” Anja Hazekamp, a Dutch representative to the European Union’s parliament, said during a public hearing in Brussels. Her remarks were reported by the trade publication Global Meat News.
The E.U. drafted a proposal to ban cloned meat sales in 2013, but passage has been stalled amid questions of how to impose the ban on meat imported from abroad. European farmers do import semen from cloned animals for breeding, and industry advocates have rejected labels on cloned meat products as too onerous and costly to implement.
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