-Caveat Lector- ---------- Forwarded message - Alternet Independent news & Information http://www.alternet.org/Public Archive/Allen813.html Dioxin: It's What's for Dinner! By Terry J. Allen, IN THESE TIMES Between mid-January and the end of May, hundreds of tons of food--potentially contaminated with dioxin and PCBs--entered the United States from Europe. Some already has been eaten, some still sits in stores and pantries. The problem started in January in Belgium when a small fat-rendering company incorporated dioxin and PCB-laced oil into its recycled fat. Eighty tons of poisoned fat then were sold to at least a dozen animal feed companies, most in Belgium, but at least one each in France and Holland. Like ink dropped in a glass of water, the 1,800 tons of animal feed they manufactured spread around the world THROUGH THE VAST CORPORATE FOOD CHAINS AND COMPLEX INTERNATIONAL TRADE NETWORKS. It took Belgian officials until March--when a startlingly high number of chickens started mysteriously dropping dead--to discover the contamination. After tracing the problem to the dioxin-laced fat, the government sat on the information until May 27 before going public. By then it was far too late to contain the economic, political and public health disaster. Belgian farmers lost more than a half-billion dollars; the ruling party lost the June election; and an unknowable number of reproductive and nervous system problems and cancers were spawned. During the four months between contamination and disclosure, livestock had eaten the feed, stored the dioxin in their body fat, and passed it on in milk, eggs and meat to humans and other animals. Some food contained almost 1,000 times the US limit for the cumulative poison; just one of the contaminated eggs could increase a three year old child's dioxin load by 20 percent. Dioxin and PCBs are dangerous toxic chemicals and potent carcinogens that pose a serious public health threat. It takes 20,000 times less dioxin than DDT to kill a person outright. But the real danger is that dioxin and pCBs accumulate in body fat over a lifetime and are passed on to fetuses in the womb and to babies through breast milk. The French ministry of the environment last year estimates that as many as 5,200 French people die each year from cancer caused by dioxins. Even low doses are dangerous according to a 1994 EPA report, which found no "safe" level. As the extent of the problem became apparent, Belgium recalled up to 800 products, shut down 1,400 farms and issues directives that affected approximately 100,000 businesses. The US response was marked with inconsistencies. The FDA, which regulates all food except meat and poultry, waited until June 11 to put a hold on animal feed from the EU and egg products from Belgium, Holland and France; on June 23, it embargoed Belgian dairy products. OFFICIALS AT THE CENTER FOR VETERINARY MEDICINE WERE ASTONISHED TO DISCOVER THE AMOUNT OF ANIMAL FEED THAT WAS EITHER IMPORTED FROM, MANUFACTURED IN, OR INCORPORATED INGREDIENTS FROM EUROPE. THEY ESTIMATED THAT HUNDREDS OF TONS OF POTENTIALLY CONTAMINATED PRODUCTS, FROM KITTY SNACKS TO DAIRY COW STARTER, ENTERED THE US DURING THE FOUR-MONTH WINDOW AND ADMITTED THEY HAD NO WAY TO TRACE BATCHES BACK TO MANUFACTURERS. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one USDA employee acknowledges that public health was not the ONLY consideration in determining policy: "There is the whole international trade thing, (the recent trade wars over) bananas, pork, beef...Any of these international issues could be coming into play." ..... While the Belgian dioxin scandal may have proven politically opportunte for US policy makers, it may have less happy consequences for consumers. There is no way to assess the quantity of Belgian dioxin that people around the world consumed before the ban and--in the US, with its lack of recall--after it. The chemicals already are pervasive in the environment and the Belgian contaminants simply will be added to the carcinogens already stored in the body fat of the world's mammals. In the southeast United States in 1997, the EPA discovered that for years chickens and farm-raised catfish had been eating feed to which dioxin-rich clay had been added as an anti-caking agent. According to reporting by D. MacKenzie in the British magazine New Scientist, the FDA eventually banned the feed--but allowed moderatley contaminated chickens to be sold as food, as long as most of the fat was removed. While levels in the US samples--at least at the time they were discovered--were lower than in the Belgian feed, the contamination had a longer time to accumulate in consumers. In the end, the Belgian incident was extraordinary not for the quantity of dioxin involved but FOR THE WAY IT SPREAD SO QUICKLY AROUND THE WORLD. The combination of industrial farming and globalization created conditions under which accident or misconduct by one small producer had worldwide political, economic and health consequences. The use of this crisis by the United States to score trade points while risking consumer health should give Europeans pause as they consider putting their trust in a US type regulatory system and its comittment to "science." _______________________________ Terry J. Allen is a Vermont-based journalist. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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