Animal feed regulation is the key issue in pork crisis
Following receipt by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland last Saturday of confirmation from the UK's Central Science Laboratory in York that Irish pork and feed samples contained high levels of dioxin-like compounds, it was announced at a press conference later that evening that all pork products were to be withdrawn immediately.
Clearly the Government and the authority realised the gravity of the situation and acted with great urgency and in a precautionary manner.
However, they had some indications of the problem from preliminary measurements carried out in November.
Assurances were given to the public that there was no need to worry and that the short-term peak in exposure to dioxin-like PCB would not cause any adverse health effects.
I do not wish to reiterate what has already been written on this issue but, in my opinion, there are three major aspects to this situation which deserve further comment.
Those are: the regulation of inputs to the feed materials; the manner and extent of communicating the overall situation to the public; and the way in which the final pork contamination results were assessed in the context of possible adverse human health effects.
It now appears that there was substantial failure to ensure that the process by which some of the ingredients which went into the feedstuffs was licensed and monitored, and that it was at this step that the potentially toxic PCB was introduced to the feed for pigs for nine farms.
Clearly this is the critical step in the food supply chain and it should be subject to the most stringent regulation.
It is important to note that PCBs are not only potentially toxic dioxin-like substances but are also regarded as persistent organic pollutants -- some of which are banned under the Stockholm Agreement.
They simply should not be present in any foodstuffs at any stage except at background concentrations.
With regard to the government declaration to initiate withdrawal of all pork products last Saturday, it may be argued that they should have made a preliminary announcement that there was a possible pork contamination issue, and follow up with a statement that they would wait some days before announcing actual withdrawal of pork products until a full risk assessment analysis was carried out on the contamination data.
The health risk analysis, currently under way with the new Expert Group, should provide an unequivocal answer to the degree of possible adverse health effects, if any. This action would have been preferable to the comparison with the Belgian food dioxin episode in 1999 made by some commentators.
This might also have resulted in a lesser impact on the pork processors and farmers in Ireland.
As it is, much damage has been done to the reputation of the Irish pig farmers and processors through no fault of their own.
Just yesterday, it appeared that we had a similar problem with contamination of beef by the same type of PCB-contaminated feedstuff, although the degree of contamination is low -- some 80 to 100 times less than in case of pork.
This deepening crisis merely serves to show the importance of stringent regulation of the most critical link in our food supply chain.
Looking to the future, the relevant regulatory bodies need to prioritise regulation of one of the most critical stages in meat production -- feedstuff ingredient processing.
Prof James Heffron is professor of Biochemistry at University College Cork and a member of the government-appointed expert group set up to examine health implications of the dioxin contamination
