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Eggs contaminated with insecticide may have entered UK, EU warns Eggs contaminated with insecticide may have entered UK, EU warns
(about 2 hours later)
The European Union has notified British authorities as a precautionary measure that some eggs contaminated with an insecticide may have entered the country. Eggs contaminated with a toxic insecticide harmful to humans may have reached shops in the UK.
Food safety authorities in France, Sweden and Switzerland have also been notified by the EU. British food safety authorities were alerted over the weekend that eggs imported from Germany could be dangerous, the European commission told reporters in Brussels on Monday. Officials in France, Sweden and Switzerland have also been informed of a risk to consumers.
Millions of eggs were recalled from shops and warehouses in Germany and the Netherlands, and blocked from sale in Belgium last week after some were found to contain high levels of fipronil, a toxic insecticide banned from use in the production of food for human consumption. A spokeswoman for the commission, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, said it was now “up to the Swedish, Swiss, French and to the UK national authorities to check”.
On Monday a Dutch farming group said millions of hens may need to be culled in the Netherlands after traces of fipronil were found in eggs there. Millions of eggs have been recalled from shops and warehouses in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany in recent weeks after some were found to contain high levels of the insecticide fipronil, a common ingredient in veterinary products for getting rid of fleas, lice and ticks. It is banned from being used to treat animals destined for human consumption.
Germany and the Netherlands notified the EU’s food safety alert system about the insecticide over the weekend, the European commission said. According to the World Health Organization, the toxic substance can damage the liver, thyroid glands and kidneys if ingested in large amounts over time.
Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said the aim was “to share the information so that everybody knows that it’s now also up to the Swedish, Swiss, French and to the UK national authorities to check.” The UK’s Food Standards Agency was informed through an alert by German authorities on Saturday, Itkonen said. She said the information was shared as a precautionary measure.
She said the move was purely precautionary and did not mean that eggs contaminated with fipronil had actually entered those countries. In a statement released after the commission’s comments, the FSA acknowledged that eggs from affected farms on the continent had reached the UK, but said it did not believe that any were currently on sale.
Belgian and Dutch authorities are investigating how the insecticide came illegally into contact with poultry. “Following concerns raised in the Netherlands about a substance called fipronil which has been used inappropriately in cleaning products on chicken farms, we have identified that a very small number of eggs have been distributed to the UK from the farms affected,” the statement said.
More soon … “The numbers of eggs involved is very small and the risk to public health is very low, but we are urgently investigating the distribution of these eggs in the UK.”
The statement added: “We are working closely with the businesses that have received eggs from affected farms. Investigations to date indicate that any affected products are no longer on the shelves … We have no evidence that eggs laid in the UK are contaminated or that fipronil has been used inappropriately in the UK. 85% of the eggs we consume in the UK are laid here.”
The FSA said the number of eggs involved represented “about 0.0001% of the eggs imported into the UK each year” and that there was no need for consumers to be concerned.
The source of the contamination appears to be a supplier of insecticide in Belgium. The supplier is alleged to have mixed legal and illegal substances to improve the effectiveness of its product.
Criminal investigations have been launched in the Netherlands and Belgium, where authorities are facing questions over their conduct, having learned of the contamination in June.
Amid growing anger in Germany at the lack of transparency by the Belgians, Belgium’s agriculture minister, Denis Ducarme, said on Monday he had ordered the country’s food safety agency to report by Tuesday on why it failed to notify neighbouring countries until 20 July.
Belgian officials have admitted failing to trigger the EU’s international food safety alert system, but claimed that this was because of a fraud inquiry.
Christian Schmidt, the German agriculture minister, was due to call Ducarme on Monday to demand an explanation. “Somebody must have had criminal intentions when they contaminated eggs with a banned product,” Schmidt said at the weekend. “I expect the relevant authorities to look into this quickly and in great depth. Belgium and the Netherlands in particular are obliged to.”
The European commission refused to comment on the delay in notification “because it’s an ongoing criminal investigation”.
Ducarme said products from 57 Belgian egg producers – about a quarter of the country’s producers – had been blocked as a preventative measure.
In Germany, where the average person consumes five eggs a week, almost every state has reported eggs containing fipronil. About 30% of eggs sold in Germany are imported from the Netherlands.
The Dutch farming organisation LTO said several million hens in the Netherlands may need to be culled at 150 companies; 300,000 had already been killed. A million hens in Germany are facing slaughter. The Dutch poultry industry has warned that it faces being shut down by the crisis.