German Ag Minister Outlines Dioxin Reforms
Farms closed as investigation focuses on insolvent industrial fats and feeds company.
Mike Wilson
Published: Jan 20, 2011
BERLIN - For once, the opening press conference at the annual GreenWeek food exhibition was not dominated by questions over the European Union's long-held ban on genetically modified crops.
Instead, German Ag Minister Ilse Aigner took question after question on the growing dioxin scandal that triggered a European-wide health alert and forced the closure of thousands of German poultry and pig farms.
Shortly after the year began, German officials discovered feed tainted with the toxic chemical dioxin, which immediately set consumers in a panic and farm prices plunging. Countries such as China began closing borders to German food products.
"The introduction of dioxin into food is not just a scandal, I'd call it a terrible deed that should not have happened, speaking for all consumers," said Aigner through an interpreter. "The culprits have to be punished." German investigators are focusing attention on one particular industrial fats and feeds company, now insolvent, had intentionally distributed fatty acids meant for industrial paper products to an animal feed processor.
On Wednesday the German government approved a plan including a new licensing system for producers of oils and fats for animal feed use, plus enforced separation of oils and fats output for use in industrial and animal feed. Animal feed producers must now test ingredients themselves and give all test results to authorities. They will also be forced to take out extra insurance.
"The entire ministry has been working to develop a comprehensive action plan to safeguard the food and feed chain – tighter controls, and greater requirements for suppliers, for starters," said Aigner, who was initially criticized for moving too slowly on the issue.
Aigner plans to implement a dioxin early warning system, but could not say for sure how German farmers impacted by the crisis would be financially compensated, other than short-term, low-interest government loans. She hoped the guilty companies would be forced to compensate farmer losses, but that would be up to the justice department.
She said no one yet knew where the dioxin came from, although samples of tainted feed were being sampled and investigated.
"The perpetrators damaged the farmers and brought about economic losses for them," she said. "There are a lot of losses because farms had to be closed and consumers became resistant to purchasing products, leading to a decline in pork and dairy prices." Aigner said 4,760 farms had been closed at the height of the alert but the total had now dropped to 931.
"An essential point in our action plan includes the Ministry of Justice," she said. "We will talk about whether life or limb were in danger and whether the offending companies can be banned from future production. We need to make sure what the legal ramifications are in detail.
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