On June 17 MEPs from the Environment and Agriculture Committees will vote on draft regulations proposing to ban the cloning of farm animals and imports of products from cloned animals.

In a draft report written by Giulia Moi and Renate Sommer, MEPs say "measures should be taken to avoid the import... of food obtained from animal clones and their descendants produced in third countries." They have added that consumers do not want it.

However, their calls for the ban to cover the offspring of clones is likely to set them on a collision course with the Commission and Member States who say that rules governing offspring and their products would be costly, difficult and politically sensitive due to reliance on trade partners like the US, where cloning is allowed.

The EU's plan to ban cloning of meat products was launched in December 2013, mainly in response to animal welfare concerns, but at the time it was said that farms could continue to import semen from countries like the US where cloning is allowed.

A dispute over whether to label food from the offspring of clones already led to talks collapsing in 2011.