At 09:40 AM 6/13/99 -0500, Ronald Nigh wrote:
>I recevied this article, originally from New Scientist, for those who
were
>wondering about the source of contamination in Belgian food.
>
>
>
> =20
>
> Recipe for disaster
>
> Debora Mackenzie
> BELGIANS WILL BE REELING from
> further shocks this week. Food which was last week
> revealed to have been contaminated with dioxins also
> contained high levels of PCBs--and all the
> contaminated produce has probably already been
> eaten. What's more, the first estimates of likely doses
> suggest that young children may be at risk from the
> poisons.=20
>
> Meat and eggs started reappearing on Belgian grocery
> shelves this week, after the discovery of high levels of
> dioxins in chickens and eggs led to the destruction of
> thousands of tonnes of food.=20
>
> In January, chicken farmers noticed that eggs were
> not hatching and that chicks had neural disorders. At
> first, vets suspected nutrient deficiencies. In April,
> however, a feed manufacturer sent a laying hen and
> suspect feed to RIKILT, the Dutch State Institute for
> Quality Control of Agricultural Products based in
> Wageningen--the nearest laboratory that could
> measure dioxins.=20
>
> RIKILT found 781 parts per trillion of dioxins in fat
> in the feed--more than 1500 times the legal limit. The
> contamination was traced to an 80-tonne batch of fat
> produced by Verkest, a company near Ghent, which
> was sold to 12 feed manufacturers.=20
>
> Wim Traag of RIKILT says the batch contained 8
> litres of oil containing dioxins and PCBs, which are
> also toxic. One theory is that used transformer oil,
> rich in PCBs, was dumped in a public recycling
> container for used frying oil.=20
>
> The batch would have made 1600 tonnes of feed,
> enough to feed 16 million chickens for a day, says
> Traag. The number of people affected depends on
> how many animals ate the poison and passed it on in
> meat or eggs. "Either a few people got a large dose, or
> many people got a small dose," says Traag.=20
>
> So far only two chickens and two eggs collected from
> hatcheries in April have been analysed. All were
> highly contaminated. The contaminated feed may
> have also been eaten by pigs and cattle, prompting the
> widespread withdrawal of meat products across
> Europe. But meat and eggs produced more recently
> have so far tested clean. "The contamination has
> probably all been eaten," says Traag.=20
>
> The two chickens contained 958 and 775 parts per
> trillion of dioxin in their fat, and one had 400 parts per
> million of PCBs--400 times the Dutch limit for food.
> Given the average Belgian diet, says Martin van den
> Berg of the University of Utrecht, if all eggs and
> chickens in the affected area contained 900 parts per
> trillion of dioxin in their fat, people would have
> consumed forty times the WHO's recommended daily
> limit of 1 picogram per kilogram of body weight. As
> certain PCBs resemble dioxins as well, he says, toxic
> limits could well have been exceeded a hundred-fold.=20
>
> The impact on the Belgian population--and on people
> elsewhere who ate Belgian products--depends on how
> much food was contaminated and how long it was
> available. "Most people carry 2 to 6 nanograms per
> kilogram of body weight of dioxins already," says
> Rolaf van Leeuwen of the WHO's European Centre
> for Environment and Health in Bilthoven, the
> Netherlands. A single egg containing 900 parts per
> trillion of dioxin in its fat adds 6 nanograms to that
> load--an increase of as little as 1.4 per cent for an
> adult, but as much as 20 per cent for a three-year-old.
> Like PCBs, dioxins persist in body fat.=20
>
> The doses consumed by the Belgians are probably too
> low to cause cancer, according to van den Berg, but
> could affect neural and cognitive development, the
> immune system, and thyroid and steroid hormones,
> especially in unborn and young children. "People at
> risk should be identified now, and followed medically
> for the next ten years," he says.
>
> From New Scientist, 12 June 1999
>
> =20
>
>
>
> =A9 Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 1999
>
>Ronald Nigh
>Dana, A.C.
>Mexico, D.F. & San Crist=F3bal de Las Casas, Chiapas
>Tel. y FAX 525-666-73-66 (DF)
> 529-678-72-15 (Chiapas)
>danamex@mail.internet.com.mx
> =20
>
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Steven E. Kraft
Professor/Chair
Dept. of Agribusiness Economics
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Carbondale, IL 62901-4410
Ph. 618-453-2421
Fx. 618-453-1708
email: sekraft@siu.edu
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