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.

The four men arrested in the North are being questioned on suspicion of fraud by false representation — moving oil without proper authorisation.

The oil was allegedly supplied to producers in the Republic, who lost an estimated €120 million.

Three of the four men are from the Dungannon and Coalisland areas of east Tyrone. The fourth was detained in Blackwatertown, Co Armagh. They are aged 43, 29, 27 and 25 and it is understood some of them are related. They are being questioned in Antrim by officers belonging to the PSNI’s crime operations department.

Members of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Dublin, which launched the initial investigation, are liaising with police colleagues north of the border. The man arrested in Co Monaghan is in his 50s. He is being held at Monaghan Garda Station under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act and can be held for up to 24 hours.

A High Court judge has ordered a Northern Ireland company to pay €38.7 million damages to a Co Wexford company arising from the animal feed contamination.

The 2008 recall of Irish pork was ordered after pig meat on a number of farms was found to have between 80 and 200 times more dioxins than the recognised safety limit. Dioxins such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were detected in the biscuit feed meal for pigs and cattle.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly ruled that Millstream Recycling Ltd was entitled to the damages against O’Neill Fuels Ltd, of Coalisland, Co Tyrone, which had denied supplying any fuel containing dioxins.

The Northern Ireland Industry Feed Assurance Group (IFAG) launches a report on assuring food safety in Belfast next week.

It will outline the agri-food industry’s plans for reducing risks to the feed manufacturing, farming and processing sectors in the North associated with the potential contamination of feed.

It is intended to alert all food and feed businesses to the commercial risks that arise from feeding contaminated foodstuffs to livestock, and to reduce the potential risk of food scares occurring in the future.