Five held over €120m contaminated pork scare

FIVE men have been arrested as part of a cross-border investigation into a contamination scare in the pork industry which cost pig producers here an estimated €120 million.

Four were detained in Co Tyrone and Co Armagh by detectives belonging to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), while a fifth was arrested by gardaí in Co Monaghan.

At the time of the alert, just before Christmas 2008, shelves across Europe had to be cleared of pork produced in the Republic after traces of dioxins were found in oil used in the making of feed to pigs and cattle.