South Korea Halts Imports of Belgian, Dutch Pork over Dioxin Find
Date: 30-Jan-06
Country: SOUTH KOREA
The move came after Dutch food authority VWA said on Thursday it had found dioxin in pork fat produced by Belgium's Profat TM and delivered to the Netherlands, the official at the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service said by telephone.
"The agriculture ministry has notified of the temporary import suspension on Jan. 27, citing news reports of dioxin contamination in feed products supplied to the Netherlands," said the official, who declined to be identified.
Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry were not immediately available for comment.
Belgium's Food Agency confirmed that a ban has been put in place and that it was in contact with the South Korean authorities in a bid to resume trade.
"We know this is a very limited contamination," Food Agency spokesman Pascal Houbaert said. "We are trying to convince our trade partners to return to normal commercial relations."
He added that the Belgian authorities are still investigating the contamination. The agency said on its Web site that no dioxin cases had been reported in Belgium.
The Dutch food authority VWA said that as a precaution it had quarantined 275 businesses that had received feed from the Dutch farm where the dioxin was originally found.
The agency said on its Web site it was still checking whether any of those companies -- mostly pig farms, but also some poultry farms -- had delivered products to other businesses.
The VWA said it would slaughter some animals to determine whether norms for dioxin in meat were met, and if that was the case would would lift the quarantine as soon as possible.
South Korea imported a combined 25,678 tonnes of pork meat from the two countries for the first 11 months of 2005, or 10 percent of the total 253,110 tonnes, according to the agriculture ministry's Web site (http://www.maf.go.kr).
The Netherlands is one of the world's top meat exporters and Europe's second-biggest animal feed producer.
VWA said in a statement the measured dioxin level was 25 times above the norm but saw no direct public health threat.
"Since the contaminated raw material is in small quantities and it is then further processed, there is no direct threat to public health," it said.
Dioxins are one of a number of toxic chemicals that originate in pesticides or industrial processes, leach into rivers and lakes and build up in the flesh of fish and animals.
(Additional reporting by Emma Davis in Brussels and Niclas Mika in Amsterdam)