Levels of milk dioxins within limits

THE Food Safety Authority of Ireland has said there are no public health issues after milk with illegal levels of dioxin were discovered on two dairy farms in Northern Ireland.

It is understood the contamination resulted from cattle on the two farms being given feed from the same Carlow-based source that resulted in Irish pork and beef products being removed from supermarket shelves before Christmas.

The Food Standards Agency in Britain said while there had been a breach of regulations, the levels of dioxin in the milk were much lower than those found in pork and beef.

The affected milk was distributed on both side of the border.

However, the FSAI said the milk would have been diluted with milk from other farms, which meant the finished product was likely to be well within the legal limits for dioxins.

An FSAI spokesperson said it had not issued any public notice about the contaminated milk because it didn’t want to cause “a scare”.

He also stated that the authority was certain that all of the contaminated feed had been identified and withdrawn from farms in the Republic.

The FSAI’s counterpart in Northern Ireland said the risk to health from either drinking the affected milk or eating products made from the milk was “extremely low”.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that there were 21 infringements of food safety standards at bottled water plants in the Republic over the past two years.

Junior health minister Mary Wallace said 12 infringements were discovered during a total of 22 inspections in 2007, while nine infringements were detected last year in the course of 24 inspections. There is a total of 25 bottled water plants in the Republic.