Eideard

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Germany has closed 934 more poultry and pig farms as fears over the contamination of dioxin in animal feed continue. The move came after a manufacturer in Lower Saxony was found to have hidden some of the outlets it sold produce to.

Farms were closed in Lower Saxony as well as in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Brandenburg.

The scandal began last week after high levels of dioxin, known to cause cancer, were found in eggs and pork. As a result, 100,000 eggs were destroyed and thousands of farms were closed, although most have since been allowed to resume operations.

Officials in Lower Saxony say they have opened an investigation after they discovered that the manufacturer had not revealed a full list of all of the companies it had made deliveries to.

“This is a scandal within the scandal,” Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said…

Dioxins, which are found at low levels in many foods, do not cause immediate health problems but long-term exposure to high levels has been shown to cause a range of effects, including cancer.

The origin of the contamination has been traced to a distributor in the northern state of Schleswig Holstein, where oils intended for use in bio-fuels were accidentally distributed for animal feed.

What still needs to be sorted out is how much of this scandal is owed to mistakes and how much to deliberate fraud? And when does responsibility for regulation and oversight get on the agenda for re-evaluation?

For the first time since the dioxin scandal broke out in Germany, the toxin has been found in pigs. EU officials have confirmed that the animal feed was also exported to France and Denmark.

German authorities have detected high levels of the toxic chemical dioxin in pork from a farm banned from selling since last week’s scare, the Consumer Protection Ministry in the state of Lower Saxony said Tuesday.

“A test on the meat has shown high levels of dioxin content,” a ministry spokesman told the news agency AFP.

One animal had been slaughtered for testing purposes and found to be over the limit. Hundreds of pigs on the farm were then culled…

The northern German farm was one of those supplied with animal feed containing ingredients made by a firm suspected of knowingly selling some 3,000 tons of fatty acids meant only for industrial use. Samples of the fat contained more than 70 times the approved amount of dioxin.

The scandal broke last week when German investigators found excessive levels of dioxin in eggs and then some chickens. Authorities then froze sales of poultry, pork and eggs from thousands of farms…

The government has said so far that there is no immediate risk to public health. German officials say the dioxin levels pose no risk to humans if they only eat small amounts of the tainted food, but add that the contamination must be stamped out to avert serious long-term risks…

“The damage that has been caused is immense, not only financially but also when it comes to consumer trust … This is a scandal, as consumers who expect safe food were duped,” German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said on Monday.

Minister Aigner said, “This incident must and will have consequences” – and I certainly hope so. Traditions of food purity are older and most would think more deeply ingrained in the commerce and culture of Europe than in much of the rest of the world.

Maybe much less so than we assumed.

Up to 3,000 tonnes of an animal feed additive sold in Germany have been found to contain traces of dioxin, according to a government report.

Earlier, officials said they believed that just 527 tonnes of the additive – which is a type of fat – had been contaminated.

After dioxin was found in eggs and poultry last week, more than 1,000 farms were banned from selling eggs…

Dioxin is a poisonous chemical, linked to the development of cancer in humans…

Police carried out searches on Wednesday at the Schleswig-Holstein farm which produced the fat, Harles and Jentzsch, and a subsidiary in Lower Saxony.

Harles and Jentzsch sold the fat to 25 German feed manufacturers…

Officials say the warning to consumers applies only to eggs sold before 23 December.

Under current German law, offenders who use harmful or banned substances in food and animal feed can be fined or face up to three years in prison.

And, um, don’t feel too smug or encouraged by our own FDA regs just having been upgraded for the first time in over 70 years. The Party of NO has vowed to prevent any funding for inspection or enforcement of new food safety procedures.

Gather current and former Mossville, Louisiana, residents in a room and you’re likely to hear a litany of health problems and a list of friends and relatives who died young.

“I got cancer. My dad had cancer. In fact, he died of cancer. It’s a lot of people in this area who died of cancer,” says Herman Singleton Jr., 51, who also lost two uncles and an aunt to cancer.

Singleton and many others in this predominantly African-American community in southwest Louisiana suspect the 14 chemical plants nearby have played a role in the cancer and other diseases they say have ravaged the area.

For decades, Mossville residents have complained about their health problems to industry, and to state and federal agencies. Now with a new Environmental Protection Agency administrator outspoken about her commitment to environmental justice, expectations are growing…

Lisa Jackson, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the first African-American administrator of the EPA, this year listed environmental justice as one of her seven priorities…

Thousands of pounds of carcinogens such as benzene and vinyl chloride are released from the facilities near Mossville each year, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Robert Bullard, author of “Dumping in Dixie,” says it’s no surprise industry chose Mossvillle, an unincorporated community founded by African Americans in the 1790s.

Without the power, Bullard says, African-Americans have borne the brunt of living near industry, landfills and hazardous facilities…

Bullard says Jackson has breathed new life into environmental justice since she took office last year. During the previous eight years, he says, “environmental justice was non-existent or invisible.”

Some residents of Mossville have blood dioxin levels three times above acceptable levels. When the EPA reviewed such tests during the Bush years their decision was that people shouldn’t worry about that.

Color is always an acceptable reason for differentiating everything from health care to pollution – in America.

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels of radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.

Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.

The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country…

“We have been regulating and monitoring this and we have been urgently trying to assemble a database. We have had co-operation from the United Nations environment programme and have given our reports in Geneva. We have studied 500 sites for chemicals and depleted uranium. Until now we have found 42 places that have been declared as [high risk] both from uranium and toxins…”

Scrap sites remain a prime concern. Wastelands of rusting cars and war damage dot Baghdad and other cities between the capital and Basra, offering unchecked access to both children and scavengers.

The United States continues to leave an unmatched heritage through the lands we “liberate”. From Agent Orange and landmines in VietNam and Cambodia – depleted uranium rounds in the Middle East – we continue to kill and maim generations well beyond the context of battlefields.