Concerns over contaminated meat exports
tested for traces of a dangerous herbicide which entered the
European food chain via a pesticide store in former East Germany.
Poultry meat in Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria is being tested for traces of a dangerous herbicide which entered the European food chain via a pesticide store in former East Germany.
A German organic poultry producer may have exported meat contaminated with the herbicide to the three countries, a spokeswoman for Germany's Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.
Tens of thousands of chickens on German organic farms are being slaughtered after it was confirmed they ate feed contaminated with the chemical nitrofen, which can cause cancer in people eating meat and eggs.
"We have a report from Lower Saxony that one company exported poultry meat to Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria," the spokeswoman said. The company received tainted feed but it is not known whether the meat exported is actually contaminated, she said.
"These countries have been informed via the European Union rapid warning system and tests are being made on samples, we have no more information than that," the spokeswoman added.
The EU, whose rapid warning system is a hotline used by governments to inform each other of urgent food safety matters, had asked Germany for information on possible exports on Thursday.
Wheat contaminated with nitrofen was used by a company in the state of Lower Saxony to make 550 tons of feed and delivered to over 100 farms throughout Germany producing chickens, eggs and other poultry using ecological farming methods.
The federal Agriculture Ministry said on Saturday the source of the contaminated wheat was a warehouse in the East German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The warehouse had been used as a pesticide and weedkiller store during communist rule in East Germany but it is now used to hold wheat. Chemical residues had contaminated wheat in store.
