Lack of facilities led to late contamination detection, admits minister
The Minister for Food Trevor Sargent has admitted that the presence of PCBs in Irish pig meat would have been confirmed sooner if facilities to detect dioxins were available in Ireland.
Speaking on RTÉ radio today, the Green Party Minister said that the detection of PCB would have been quicker if we had dioxin monitoring facilities in Ireland, and confirmed that an investigation has been launched into the source of the problem.
The minister made his comments after the Food Safety Authority advised consumers and supermarkets to destroy all pork and bacon in their homes as a precautionary measure following the discovery of dioxin PCB in Irish pork.
That includes pork, bacon, rashers, sausages, gammon steaks, salami, ham, sausage rolls, black pudding, white pudding and ready meals with Irish pork/bacon as an ingredient.
The presence of the PCBs was first detected early last week, but the samples had to be sent to England before the presence of the dioxins could be confirmed. That confirmation form the English labs only came through on Saturday.
“While we will have dioxin monitoring facilities in Ireland, at long last, we don’t at present,” he said, “which means that it does take the time to send samples to England and nearly a week to get the results back.”
What had happened pointed to the need to have a dioxin facility, and we will have that now so that we will be “more on top of the situation.”
However the Minister said that the Government has done everything possible in the shortest amount of time possible.”
He also said that during the coming days a lab near Maynooth will be able to provide further details on the source of the problem.
The source of the contamination is believed to be a licensed mill, which manufactures animal feed. Only nine pig farms got feed from the source of the contamination.
He said that an investigation has been launched into the source of the problem and that the Government has taken decisive action.
The Green Party minister said that one particular plant is responsible for the problem. He said that the problem occurred when dough surplus to the baking process, which is used to make the animal feed, is dried.
As part of that drying process, food-grade oil is used as a standard procedure. He said: “We have our suspicions that the oil being used was not food grade which lead to the contamination which has caused such a crisis throughout the industry.”
The minster also confirmed that in addition to the 47 pig farms, tests are being carried out on 38 beef farms, which are thought to have used feed from the mill.
“That beef is not going into the food chain and won’t be allowed to do so until we have the results of those tests,” said the Minister.
Pig producers on the 400 unaffected farms are hoping to have fresh product on the shelves later this week.
He added that only a small amount of pork has been affected, but because it is mixed in with the system we have to take a blanket approach and do as the FSA recommended, and recall all pork products dating back to 1 September.
“We are constantly monitoring through the national feed inspection programme, and nation residue monitoring plan samples both of meat and all agriculture products, including feed,” he said.
“It is a very extensive programme with 2200 inspections of feed annually,” he said adding that when this showed up it rang alarm bells.
While more than 7,200 analysis were carried out samples had to be sent to the UK.
In response to the fact that 80 to 200 times the legal limit of PCB’s were found in pig meat the Minister said that there was a “very low level of tolerance” because “we don’t want them in our food”.
Levels like that “ring very loud alarm bells” and they have to “get that off the shelves immediately”.
However, the Minister said that there is no health danger based on the current exposure.
“Such levels are not acceptable and should not be in our food, and so we have to take immediate action to ensure it is not in the food chain.”
