The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has now published complete lists of companies affected by the Irish pork contamination alert:
- 5 Irish processors that handled pigs from farms affected by the dioxin contamination
- 12 affected meat processors in Northern Ireland
- 38 English, 3 Scottish, 3 Welsh and 7 Northern Ireland meat companies that received pigmeat or pork products from those Irish processors.
Meat processors and companies in receipt of pigs, pigmeat and pork from affected farms
Follow the links from the FSA’s news release on the recall of Irish pork for pdf documents of the complete lists.
The FSA also reports that most retailers and caterers have traced and removed all affected products but is still working with businesses to “agree a date this week when we will be able to say with certainty that consumers can now buy Irish pork unaffected by contaminated feed”.
Retailers, caterers and producers selling pork that can be directly traced to unaffected farms are able to continue selling those products.
Dioxins in cattle
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has now confirmed that contaminated feed has also been fed to beef and dairy cattle in the Republic of Ireland, while the FSA confirms that 9 cattle farms in Northern Ireland received contaminated feed.
Stock is being withheld from the food supply chain but the risk has been evaluated as insufficient to warrant a product recall or withdrawal. The FSAI states:
samples are technically non-compliant with proposed EC limits for marker PCBs but not at a level that would pose any public health concern
The FSA explains the different reaction to contamination of beef:
The risk to UK consumers remains very low. This is because you would need to eat large quantities of the contaminant chemical over a long period of time for there to be any risk to your health. Because of this low risk to health, we’re taking a proportionate approach and therefore products are not being removed from the shelves.
Our only options are to trust the experts on this complex evaluation of risk or avoid any products that might conceivably be affected.
