Agence France-Presse
First Posted 06:25:00 12/09/2008
PARIS -- Authorities across Europe and Asia rushed to pull Irish pork from store shelves or ban imports Monday as the European Commission said a score of countries could be affected by a dioxin scare.
Ireland on Saturday said it was recalling all pork products made in the country after the discovery of dioxins, which may cause cancer, in slaughtered pigs.
The chemicals were thought to have contaminated feed.
Ireland is a major exporter of pork, with Britain by far the biggest market, followed by Germany, France, Russia and Japan, according to official figures.
But several countries said their imports were small and they did not expect problems, but were taking action to reassure consumers.
"We are currently suspending imports as a precaution," said Mitsue Kondo, a food safety official at Japan's health ministry.
Japanese authorities are also checking with Irish officials about the contaminated meat and may recall Irish pork products, she added.
"Along with the ban on imports, retailers were told to stop the sale of Irish pork products," a South Korean agriculture ministry spokesman told AFP.
China's General Administration of Quality Inspection and Quarantine said, "In accordance with a China-Ireland bilateral agreement, we have provisionally stopped the direct and indirect import of Irish pork products and livestock feed."
"Secondly we have recalled and returned Irish pork products that were produced after September 1," it added in a notice on its website.
Singapore's government said it had suspended the import and sale of all pork and related products from Ireland.
Importers and retailers have been instructed to recall the products from the market with immediate effect, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority said in a statement on its website.
The Straits Times newspaper said Singapore imported about 516 tonnes (567.6 tons) of pork products from Ireland in the last three months.
In Europe, Bulgarian veterinary inspectors banned the sale of 60 tonnes of pork imported from Ireland earlier this month.
The ministry of farming and food said that the shipments of Irish meat were found in storehouses in the capital Sofia and the central city of Plovdiv.
It added that veterinary inspectors will check a further 112 cold stores across the country, conduct lab analyses and destroy any meat or meat products if found to contain dioxins.
In Berlin, the government said Germany had only imported minimal amounts of Irish pork and sees no public health threat, although it ordered all Irish pork pulled from the shelves Sunday.
Germany has imported only 2,000 tonnes of pork from Ireland since September 1, the period specified by Dublin in its warning, the agriculture and consumer affairs ministry said.
The head of Poland's veterinary services, Krzysztof Jazdzewski, said his department was checking 667 tonnes of Irish pork imported by three companies.
Russia also announced it was suspending imports of Irish pork products as well as the sale of such products until Moscow can determine how many tonnes of Irish pork have reached Russia and during what period, Russian news agencies reported.
European Agriculture Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said earlier that the EU's 27 member states should remove pork products from Ireland from sale and carry out tests.
She said in Brussels that potentially contaminated meat may have been sent to Belgium, Britain, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Sweden within the EU.
Tainted meat may also have been sent to non-EU members Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States.
In France, Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier played down the threat in an interview published Monday, while adding that traders had been ordered to check the provenance of their products and withdraw relevant Irish pork.
"It is not a major alert for France," he told the daily Le Parisien.
"Ninety-five percent of fresh pork consumed in France is produced in this country."
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