020125 Europe Raises Defenses Against New Meat Scare

Hamburg - European countries raised their defenses against imports of animal feed and meat tainted with a drug that can stop human blood cell production, with Germany and Austria the first to seize risky meat.

Farm ministry officials were under increasing pressure to explain how the feed, contaminated with the antibiotic chloramphenicol, was sold and then entered the food chain without swift warning. The drug is used to treat anthrax and typhoid.

Officials in Austria and two regions of Germany, which alerted other European countries about exports from the Netherlands of feed, said they had traced potentially dangerous veal also imported from the Netherlands and would destroy it.

“It has all been found today, seized and will be sent for destruction,” a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia state environment and agriculture ministry said. “None of it was sold.”

An official in Lower Saxony said two parcels of calves' liver imported by a trader in Harburg, south of Hamburg, had been found but efforts were still being made to trace 13 more that had been sold to 11 customers. Austria's health ministry said it had seized 13.62 kilograms of the liver and that consumers were no longer at risk.

The findings have sparked recriminations between Germany and the Netherlands, which imported shrimp contaminated with chloramphenicol from the Far East last year and then sent them to a feed plant in Lower Saxony.

The contaminated shrimp became part of a consignment of 970 tonnes of feed delivered by the German plant in December to firms in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Poland and Romania.

The drug, which can cause a potentially lethal form of anaemia in humans, has also been found in meat exported from a Dutch slaughterhouse to Germany, France and Austria.

German authorities said a mistake at a Dutch laboratory had led to the veal being cleared as safe. Any link between the feed and meat has yet to be established.

COUNTRIES SCRAMBLE TO TRACK FEED

The scare--just over a year after the “mad cow” crisis spread from Britain to the continent, leading to a plunge in beef sales--has prompted Germany's parliament to schedule an emergency hearing of its farm and consumer protection committee.

German Agriculture Minister Renate Kuenast rejected calls for her resignation, saying two officials had been removed from their jobs after a warning over the feed was delayed.

While a pig farm in east Germany was put in quarantine, farm ministry officials said further tests on a suspect consignment of fish meal were proving negative.

But that did not stop Poland from announcing plans to ban imports of fish meal from Saturday after the country's chief veterinarian said local authorities had tracked down a consignment of 200 tonnes.

“Some 140 tonnes have been sold to the market, but we found all the buyers and now are now checking poultry fed with the suspect meal. So far we found no traces of chloramphenicol,” Poland's chief veterinarian, Piotr Kolodziej, told Reuters. “Another 60 tonnes were in warehouses and they will not be sold on.”

Romanian officials said they had tightened border controls to screen imported meat and feed for possible contamination.

The Netherlands said it was also tracking and recalling meat from the slaughtered calf that contained traces of the drug, while Britain said it had alerted all port and local authorities to check for imports of the feed and meat.

DRUG IS RISKY

A spokesman for the UK Food Standards Agency said the drug was risky to human health and should never have entered either the animal or human food chain.

“Our information is that it is risky and quite highly so...it's a carcinogen so it can be harmful if levels build up,” he told Reuters. “It's not possible to identify a safe level of exposure.”

China, identified by a Dutch company as the source of the shrimp, aims to tighten control over seafood exports and “match our regulations with international standards,” a spokeswoman said. She added that the drug could have got into the shrimp after processing workers used it on their cuts.

Industry analysts in Shanghai said antibiotics such as chloramphenicol were used by fisheries to cure aquatic disease. Chinese farms typically failed to get rid of antibiotics before they shipped their products, they said.

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