NORTHERN IRELAND:THE NORTH'S Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew has placed restrictions on nine pig farms thought to have used contaminated feed.
She said the nine farms were identified on her department’s electronic monitoring system. Households have been advised not to eat pork products produced on either side of the Border.
The Belfast office of the Food Standards Agency is asking people to leave such products in their fridges, rather than dump them, until further notice.
The agency said the risk to health was very low, but pork products should not be eaten until more information was provided.
“From the information that we have at this time, we do not believe there is significant risk to UK consumers as adverse health effects from eating the affected products are only likely if people are exposed to relatively high levels of this contaminant for long periods,” it said. The agency’s chief executive Alan Reilly said the levels of contaminant in the feed were very high. “The levels in the pork itself were in the region of about 80 to 200 times above the safe limits,” he said.
Ms Gildernew told the BBC: “We want to take the necessary steps to protect consumer health.”
She said consumers should have the information necessary.
“They should not buy or eat pork products in the meantime while we are finding out just exactly the extent of this problem and the threat to human health.”
She said her officials were in close contact with their counterparts in the Republic’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food as well as with Health Minister Michael McGimpsey.
“There is obviously a large amount of north-south movement of these products in Ireland and we need to carefully consider the way ahead,” she said. The contaminant is a dioxin known as polychlorinated biphenyls or PCB, which is carcinogenic if there are high levels of consumption over time.
Traces were first discovered late on Friday, the Minister said.
It was not known last night how the problem would affect normal operations at Northern Ireland’s pork producers.