EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Tonio BORG
Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy
Press Statement on Cloning and Novel Food
Press Room of Berlaymont, Brussels
18 December 2013
SPEECH/13/1081
Ladies and gentleman,
The college of Commissioners has today adopted an important package of measures on
animal cloning and novel food which aim to provide, amongst other things, legal
certainty on these emotive issues.
Novel Food
On Novel Food, today's proposal revises the current Regulation with a view to improving
access of new and innovative food to the EU market, while still maintaining a high level
of consumer protection.
We propose to create a centralised authorisation system, which will allow greater
certainty for applicants seeking an authorisation for a novel food and will simplify and
speed up the process to enable safe and innovative food to reach the EU market faster.
These authorisations will be generic, therefore, giving access to sell and use new food to
all food business operators, including SMEs.
Supporting innovation by giving an incentive for businesses to innovate is also a key
feature of the new system. In duly justified cases and for highly innovative products, the
company submitting the application containing new data will be given data protection
on that novel food for 5 years. However, another food business operator may make a
new request on the same food based on their own application.
Cloning
Let me now turn to the cloning issue
This is a sensitive issue on which the College held a debate some weeks ago. As a result
of this debate I have today proposed two draft Directives addressing animal welfare and
ethical concerns related to the use of the cloning technique.
One of the Directives will ban the use of the cloning technique in the EU for farmed
animals and also proposes a ban on imports into the EU of these clone animal.
The second Directive bans the marketing of food, such as meat or milk from cloned
animals from being placed on the EU market.
Today's policy proposals seek to ensure that no cloning for farming purposes will be
carried out in the EU and no such clone will be imported as long as animal welfare
concerns persist. This also implies a suspension of the food from the clone.
To sum up, the changes on novel food will create a more efficient and cost effective
authorisation system which will offer European consumers the benefit of a broad choice
of foodstuffs and provides a favourable environment for Europe's food industry to be
innovative and competitive in this fast evolving and dynamic sector.
The measures on animal cloning provide a clear EU policy that respond to animal welfare
concerns as well as consumer perceptions on food from animal clones in a realistic and
workable way.
Now it is for the co-legislators, the European Parliament and the Council, to start their
considerations as soon as possible to get the legislations adopted in due course.
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