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A draft law to ban the cloning of all farm animals, their descendants and products derived from them, including imports, in the EU was voted by the Environment and Agriculture committees on Wednesday. MEPs beefed up the European Commission’s initial proposal, citing high mortality rates at all development stages of cloning and EU citizens’ animal welfare and ethical concerns.
The committees’ text, approved by 82 votes to 8 with 8 abstentions, changes the form of the legal act from a directive, which EU countries would have had to transpose into their national laws, into a regulation, which would apply directly in all of them. MEPs also extended the ban’s scope to cover all species of animals kept and reproduced for farming purposes (instead of only bovine, ovine, caprine and equine species, as proposed by the Commission).
The report will be put to a vote by Parliament as a whole at the 7-9 September plenary session in Strasbourg.
Wednesday June 17, 2015/ EP/ European Union.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu
