Insecticide : hundreds of thousands of chicken eggs highly contaminated

Elenat/epictura

Published the 03.08.2017 at 18h28

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insecticideoeufPays-Basvolaille

Pesticides still and always will be. This time, however, this is present on a food that is unusual : eggs. Hundreds of thousands of hen eggs sold for consumption were contaminated with fipronil, an insecticide used for lice, ticks, mites and fleas. The case was lodged in the netherlands. The Dutch agency in charge of food and health security, the NVWA, recommends that you do not eat these eggs and throw them on-the-field.

Fipronil is a chemical substance used in veterinary products. It is found especially in products flea control for dogs and cats, but its use for the treatment of animals destined for the food chain, such as hens, is prohibited. He never would have had to be used on poultry.

“Serious danger to public health”

In fact, the World Health Organization deems as “moderately toxic” to humans. However, it has been found in high amounts in some batches. In the beginning of the week, the NWVA has warned consumers who have purchased egg with the code X–40155XX, in which ” the rate of fipronil is so high that their consumption poses a serious danger to public health “.

Fipronil was introduced in poultry farms that had appealed to a Dutch company, Chickfriend, to carry out a treatment against sea lice red, a parasite that is harmful to the hens. The number of livestock victims of the contamination remains to this day unknown.

The producers hold the company responsible for the contamination. According to the organisation agricultural and horticultural Dutch, quoted by the radio-television public OUR, Chickfriend would have fooled the farmers by mixing ” the illegal substance to a legal product to inflate its effectiveness.”

Belgium : the origin of the contamination ?

However, according to the news agency, the Dutch ANP, the manager may in reality be located in Belgium, a few kilometers from the border. The agency explains that Chickfriend has acquired the pest control product Dega-16 to a company located in the belgian municipality of Weelde, named Poultry-Vision. It is here that fipronil could be added illegally. A search took place a few days ago in the premises of Poultry-Vision. An investigation is underway, in collaboration with the belgian authorities.

The consequences are as yet difficult to assess. Germany recalled close to one million eggs after having discovered, at a point of packaging and distribution of Rhineland-of-North-Westphalia, the presence of the insecticide in some eggs. Some 1.3 million eggs have also passed through this point before taking over the management of the Lower Saxony. The ministry of Agriculture of germany has ordered the removal of the stalls. In the netherlands, analyses are underway. The affected producers must destroy all their eggs and poultry farms are blocked.

According to the WHO, the fipronil has adverse effects on the kidneys, the liver and the thyroid. The insecticide was banned in France in 2004 due to its toxicity to bees, and then reintroduced in 2007 by the European Commission for the treatment of seed. Designed in 1993 by a French company, it is today owned by the German company BASF.