Key facts
- The health scare began when German officials announced on 3 January that eggs from German farms where hens ate dioxin-tainted feed had been contaminated. German authorities later said some poultry and hog feed had been contaminated since March.
- The origin of the feed contamination has been traced to a distributor of oils for animal feed production in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, where fatty acids meant for industrial use were distributed for animal feed.
- Operations at 4,700 German farms were shut down and thousands of hens culled in eight German states to try to prevent food supplies being contaminated by the tainted feed.
- Eggs from some of those farms were exported to Britain and the Netherlands for food processing, according to German and European Union authorities.
- German officials said the eggs pose little health risk to consumers. The compounds take a long time to accumulate in the body so a relatively short period of exposure has little impact.
- German prosecutors investigating the company believed to have contaminated feed with dioxin said they may bring criminal charges against the firm, a distributor of oils for animal feed production known as Harles und Jentzsch.
Source: Reuters
- If you enjoyed this article, you may also like this: Chinese vegetable scare raises further concerns
