Irish won‘t halt beef sales despite dioxin scare

Irish won‘t halt beef sales despite dioxin scare - Yahoo! News document.body.className = ‘js-enabled‘; Skip to navigation » Skip to content » U.S. Australia/Antarctica Irish won‘t halt beef sales despite dioxin scare Buzz Up IM del.icio.us Yahoo! Bookmarks By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer – 5 mins ago AP – Cattle stand in a field near Virginia, Ireland, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008. Ireland announced Tuesday it has …

Ireland has already ordered the withdrawal and destruction of all pork products produced since Sept. 1, a sweeping move the government says should reinforce — not undermine — international confidence in Ireland‘s food exports.

Smith said the cattle with excessive dioxin levels were "technically noncompliant, but not at a level that would pose any public health concern." Still, he said Ireland would prevent the movement of any cattle or beef from the three farms in question.

"There‘s a huge difference between 200 times above a legal limit, and two to three times," Reilly said.

A recall of Irish beef would do even greater damage to Ireland‘s recession-hit economy than its emergency shutdown Saturday of the pork industry. Ireland has 69,000 beef farms but just 400 pig farms.

Irish investigators have traced the source of the contamination to a single animal-food maker, Millstream Power Recycling Ltd., which used an oil-fired burner to dry out-of-date bread, dough and confectionary.

Authorities say Millstream supplied oil-tainted feed to at least nine pig farms and 45 cattle farms in the Republic of Ireland, and nine pig farms and 10 cattle farms in the British territory of Northern Ireland.

But Reilly said he expected the number of total positive results to be in similar proportion to Tuesday‘s findings. This would mean about a quarter, or nine, more cattle farms could test positive for excessive dioxin.

In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, authorities announced Tuesday that none of the pig farms that received the Millstream product actually used it, which means its pork products can return immediately to store shelves and export markets. But Northern Ireland‘s agriculture minister, Michelle Gildernew, said she was still awaiting test results later this week on the 10 suspect cattle farms.

Irish authorities, however, point to Europe‘s last major dioxin scare — in Belgium in May 1999, when thousands of farms were closed after dioxin-contaminated animal feed tainted meat, eggs and dairy products — to show that short-term exposure should not pose a risk.

"We‘re dealing in broad terms with the same exposure levels as in Belgium, where the follow-up showed no impact on public health," said Ireland‘s chief medical officer, Dr. Tony Holoran.

He stressed that, even if anyone ate both the dioxin-tainted beef or pork daily for the past three months, it still wouldn‘t be enough to cause a health problem.

"The risks are extremely low from any exposure that may occur. People do not need to seek any direct medical advice. We do not expect to see symptoms occurring as a result of this," Holoran said.

(This version CORRECTS ADDS background on beef industry, source of Irish contamination and Europe‘s last dioxin scare in 1999, corrects spelling of surname to Reilly sted O‘Reilly.) Recommend Buzz Up IM del.icio.us Yahoo! Bookmarks (function() { /** * YUI function to get all elements by class name * getElementsByClass */ function getElementsByClass(className, tag, root) { tag = tag || ‘*‘; root = (typeof root == ‘string‘) ? document.getElementById(root) : root || document; var nodes = [], elements = root.getElementsByTagName(tag), re = new RegExp(‘(?:^|s+)‘ + className + ‘(?:s+|$)‘); for (var i = 0, len = elements.length; i < len; ++i) { if ( re.test(elements[i].className) ) { nodes[nodes.length] = elements[i]; } } return nodes; } /** * This code displays the expand button as the page loads. This prevents any lag in displaying * the button if the page takes a long time to load. If the user clicks the button before the page * loads then we just show the full story without animation. 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