New rules mulled over dioxin contamination

DPA/Berlin

An employee of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia’s food control institute analyses eggs, suspected to be contaminated with dioxin, in Muenster

Germany debated new regulation of the animal feed industry yesterday as police studied how a substance contaminated with traces of dioxin came to be mixed with feed for chickens and pigs.

Government officials blamed a feed manufacturer, Harles and Jentzsch, for the contamination that has forced at least 1,000 farms to cease selling produce.

The company apparently purchased fatty acids to enrich the feed from a firm that recycles used cooking fat into diesel fuel.

Eventually, it was used with 527 tonnes of feed, the German food safety agency said.

The recycling company insists it had labelled the fatty acids as not for animal consumption. Germany has an elaborate system to recycle all its waste for other uses and avoid dumping it in landfills.

Sources in Berlin said Germany’s agriculture ministry would review ways to tighten monitoring of the feed industry.

One state farm minister, North Rhine Westphalia’s Johannes Remmel, called for a clear separation between recycling plants that render the fatty acids for animal feed, and those that process it for industrial use.

Eggs, pork, chicken and turkey have all been sold and consumed with higher-than-permitted levels of dioxin, officials say. Dioxin causes cancer. But the level of contamination was very low in this week’s reported incident.

Germany’s Institute for Risk Evaluation (BfR) said the risk to consumers who ate meat and eggs was insignificant.