EU Observer: Dioxin-contaminated eggs from Germany have reached the Netherlands and Great Britain and may have been further processed in food products such as mayonnaise or cookies, making their traceability virtually impossible, the EU commission said on Thursday (6 January).Germany’s agricultural ministry has announced that over 4,700 farms have been closed as a precaution after fears of dioxin contamination in animal feed. Dioxin is a toxic substance formed by burning waste and by other industrial processes and can cause cancer and miscarriages.
A spokesman for health commissioner John Dalli on Thursday however tried to downplay the negative effects, saying the concentration was still relatively low, ten times less than during a similar contagion in Belgium in 1999. Someone had to “eat a lot of eggs” to have a health problem, porte parole Frederic Vincent said.
While tracing contaminated eggs as such is relatively easy, finding contaminated products after the eggs had been mixed with other foodstuff was a much more complicated task, the spokesman explained. Read more at EU Observer……
