June 7, 1999
Belgium Food Scandal Spreads
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Filed at 8:13 a.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The government added Belgian
butter to its list of banned foods today, denying residents
yet another key ingredient in their increasingly meager
diet because of the dioxin food scandal.
Leaders huddled in crisis session for a fourth straight day
today, while hundreds of butcher and baker shops closed
because the government already has banned sales of Belgian
poultry, eggs, fatty beef and pork, and all byproducts.
The food industry federation said the 11-day crisis over
tainted animal feed already has cost producers $500
million.
The United States blocked European Union imports of pork
and poultry, and Singapore banned all meat products from
the 15-nation group. Countries from Switzerland to South
Korea took similar measures against Belgian products.
The EU's executive Commission was negotiating with
Belgium's government and assessing whether the list of more
than 1,000 farms that used some of the 176,000 pounds of
dioxin-laced animal feed was sufficient to start freeing up
part of the Belgian food market again.
``The list is now final,'' said Prime Minister Jean-Luc
Dehaene, ending days of insecurity. Now that the farms have
been pinpointed, the government hopes it will be easy to
trace any contaminated meat, eggs and byproducts.
The government and leading opposition parties also agreed
to set up a special inquiry commission to investigate how
cancer-causing dioxins ended up on Belgian dinner plates so
easily. Dioxin is a byproduct of the manufacture of some
herbicides and pesticides.
The health minister blamed the lack of controls on the
products that went into animal feed. Checks on food come
under three politicized ministries.
Two officials from the company that provided the animal
feed fattener that most likely contained the dioxin
remained under arrest on fraud charges. Prosecutors said
Monday the pollution could not have been caused by a leak
in a mechanical oil tank, increasing the likelihood of
fraud.
The scandal was also tearing at the center-left coalition
ahead of Sunday's elections. The farm ministry has
traditionally been a fiefdom of Dehaene's Christian
Democrats and the Socialists said they were outraged how
the scandal could take so long to solve.
Belgium's health and farm ministers resigned last week
after it became clear they had known about the problem for
a month without informing the public or the prime minister.
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