January 10, 2011

 

Germany's feed contamination known to have been ongoing for months

Animal feed firm Harles and Jentzsch was aware of elevated levels of dioxin in its fat as early as March 2010, eight months earlier than previously thought, a state official said Friday (Jan 7).

 

Germany's scandal over toxic dioxin levels in chicken feed escalated, as government officials accused the firm at the centre of the controversy of detecting the dioxin well before the scandal erupted.

 

A spokesman for the German Agriculture Ministry said the company, based in Uetersen, northwest of Hamburg, detected higher-than-permitted levels of dioxin in its fat with its own tests last year.

 

The ministry said Harles and Jentzsch should have immediately reported the levels to state regulators, and that the fat should never have been sold.

 

The contaminant was reportedly reduced when mixed with other substances to produce the animal feed.

 

Meanwhile the number of farms pre-emptively closed because of the dioxin scare more than quadrupled to 4,709 by Friday (Jan 7). The Agriculture Ministry said the closures were a precaution until it could be determined whether they are free from dioxin contamination.

 

Nearly all of the farm closures were pig farms in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony.

 

Late on Thursday (Jan 6), German Agricultural Minister Ilse Aigner called for stricter, EU-wide regulation on animal feed to better protect consumers and farmers.

 

She said she also spoke with EU Health Commissioner John Dalli on the telephone.

 

"In the coming weeks, I will explore with our EU partners and stakeholders ways to further strengthen our monitoring processes of dioxin in feed," Dalli said.

 

The scare began when Harles and Jentzsch allegedly supplied up to 3,000 tonnes of contaminated fatty acids - which are only meant for industrial use - to animal feed makers.

 

The feed was delivered mostly to pig and poultry farms, and eggs from some of the suspect farms were exported to the Netherlands. As a result, around 8,000 chickens from German farms were culled.

 

Earlier on Thursday (Jan 6) it was revealed that some of the suspected eggs made it to the UK. European Commission health spokesman Frederic Vincent said in Brussels that it was still unclear if those eggs contained dioxin.

 

However tests of other eggs from suspected farms were found to contain up to five times the EU's limit for dioxin.