The Dutch food and safety authority (VWA) has found above-normal levels of cancer-causing dioxin in pigs at one of the farms sealed off as a precaution after a feed-scare, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Monday. ANP said that after preliminary tests on pig meat, the VWA had found in three cases a reading of 1.3 and 1.5 picograms of dioxin per gram of fat, above a recommended level of 1.0.

Some 650 farms, including a handful raising chickens, were quarantined in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany after news first broke last week of dioxin contamination in animal feed. The VWA said 143 Dutch farms were still quarantined. Produce from the affected farms cannot be sold or transported while the order remains in effect.

Authorities in the three countries keep testing levels of the carcinogen dioxin in meat and feed. Dutch and Belgian food officials have said that meat from contaminated farms was sold in shops in the last two months but they ruled out any serious risk to public health, although conclusive meat tests results are not yet out. They said one would have to eat dioxin contaminated meat several times a day for a very long period to feel any impact, which they said was not the case in the two countries.

Dutch farmers and feed makers expressed anger on Monday over contamination of feed with the carcinogen dioxin, saying measures should be taken to prevent such problems that damage the industry s image. "This incident has an impact not only on the quarantined farms, but the whole livestock breeding industry. Sales are stagnating as a result of import bans... and damage to trade is rising rapidly," the main Dutch farmers organisation LTO said in a statement. "The damage to our reputation is also considerable. This not acceptable for us," it said.

South Korea banned pork meat from Belgium and the Netherlands, one of the world s top meat exporters, some two weeks ago when news about the dioxin contamination first broke. LTO said the existing rules on controlling animal feed were not enough to guarantee their safety and urged the Dutch feed makers association Nevedi to come up with a proposal soon on how to prevent future incidents.

COMPLIANCE WITH RULES
Nevedi, however, said the problem did not lie with the rules but in their implementation, adding authorities should do more to make sure companies, which provide raw materials to the feed industry, comply with the standards. "It is very annoying given the impact it is having on our industry," Wil van de Fliert, Nevedi s chairman, told Reuters. "It is not a question of having a system (of rules and preventive measures) as the system is in place, but it is a question of people not complying with it," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Dutch food safety authority VWA declined to comment. VWA says on its website that safety measures taken by the EU and the government have increasingly reduced the number of dioxin incidents in the past several years.

Authorities have said that the dioxin in the latest incident got into Belgian pork fat ingredients used to make animal feed in October. It was discovered and announced in late January. Belgian food safety officials have said the contamination was caused by broken filters which led to the use of unfiltered ingredients to extract pig fat from the process of making gelatine at Belgian firm PB Gelatins.

The extracted fat was later distributed to Belgian animal feed producers such as Leroy and Algoet. Shares in Belgian chemical firm Tessenderlo, which owns PB Gelatins, fell last week on the dioxin news.

The dioxin, a class of chemicals widely used in industrial processes. Dioxins are one of a number of toxic chemicals that originate in pesticides or industrial processes. They get into rivers and lakes and build up in the flesh of fish and animals.
(Planet Ark, 07/02/06)