March 28, 2009

EU members: cloned meat and nanocaution

Members of the EU want cloned meat prohibited and nanoparticles labeled in the just released report on Novel food rules.

Novel foods, MEPs set new rules Food safety 25-03-2009


"In a legislative report dealing with an update of the EU rules on novel foods, the European Parliament calls on the Commission to interdict the placing on the market of food derived from cloned animals and their descendants. MEPs also want food being produced by nanotechnology processes to undergo a specific risk assessment before being approved for use and be labelled. The report was adopted with 658 votes in favour, 15 against and 11 abstentions"....

..."Food derived from cloned animals to be excluded - new Commission proposal demanded

The Parliament wants to exclude food derived from cloned animals from the scope of this Regulation. MEPs ask the Commission to present a legislative proposal to prohibit the placing on the market of food derived from cloned animals and their offspring.

Food produced with nanotechnology processes must be safe and labelled

MEPs want that foods which have been produced by nanotechnology processes, and which will need specific risk assessment methods, may not be included in the Community list until those risk assessment methods have been approved for use.

The risk assessment methods must not imply the use of vertebrate animals; underline the MEPs, who also support the use of non-animal tests and the intelligent testing strategies.

Furthermore, all ingredients present in the form of nanomaterials shall be clearly indicated in the list of ingredients. The names of the ingredients shall be followed by the word 'nano' in brackets".

Read the report

2 comments:

Patrick said...

Where do you hear about all this interesting European stuff? I keep hearing about this kind of thing on your blog first, before I see it anywhere else...

anne said...

Hey Patrick, not sure where I linked to the report from to be honest. Probably a google news search, which I find handy. GMO Europe for eg.
The epicurian, Grist and La Vida Locavore (on blogroll) often point me to GMO info.

cheers