Germany's dioxin problems deepened Wednesday as China banned pork and egg imports ....., adding to pressure on Berlin's embattled agriculture minister.
"This is a scandal that is growing bigger and worse every day,"(Johannes Remmel)
A day after authorities ordered the slaughter of 140 pigs at a German farm following the discovery of dangerous dioxin levels in pork for the first time since a scare began last week, China said its ban was effective immediately.
It outlawed imports of "German-produced edible pork and egg products," China's product safety watchdog said. Inspections were planned on goods imported from Germany before Tuesday.
..........all incoming pork and pork products from Germany would be held for examination and only released onto the market if food safety officials were satisfied they (pork & eggs) were safe to eat.
According to government figures, from January - November 2010, Hong Kong imported about 148,000 tonnes of pork (and all other pork - based products) from Germany, accounting for about 20 % of the city's pork imports.
Previously only South Korea had banned German pork imports, despite Berlin's repeated assurance there was no immediate risk to human health. Slovakia on Wednesday lifted a halt on sales of German eggs and poultry meat.
The scare began last week when it emerged that a German firm may have supplied some 3,000 tonnes of fatty acids only meant for industrial uses to makers of animal feed late last year. The feed was then widely distributed.
There are also indications that the firm, Harles und Jentzsch, has been selling the contaminated fatty acids since last March, a Schleswig-Holstein agriculture ministry spokesman told Westfalen-Blatt daily.
The company, which is under criminal investigation, filed for insolvency Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the regional court in the western town of Itzehoe said.
With eggs found to have high levels of dioxin, which can cause cancer in high doses, authorities destroyed 100,000 eggs last week and banned almost 5,000 poultry and pigs farms from selling produce while tests were conducted.
Most of these farms have been since been given the all-clear, with just 412 still subject to the lockdown as of Wednesday, according to the agriculture ministry. Only three chickens were confirmed to be contaminated.
But on Tuesday authorities said that pork with high levels of dioxin had been discovered at a farm in the state of Lower Saxony, and that meat from pigs from the farm slaughtered before it was banned from selling could be in shops.
The FAZ also reported that although many farms are seeing restrictions lifted, more and more are being closed including 95 in North Rhine-Westphalia on Monday alone.
The German government said previously that none of the up to 150,000 tonnes of suspect animal feed had been exported, but the European Commission said this week that some had in fact made it to Denmark and France.
Around 136,000 eggs meanwhile were exported to the Netherlands, some of which ended up in Britain.
Public trust in Germany has also been shaken, with demand for organic eggs, unaffected by the scare, shooting up, according to experts and shopkeepers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that sales of organic meat are also on the rise.
The scare has put Germany's agriculture minister under pressure, with Renate Kuenast from the opposition Greens, herself a former agriculture minister, calling for her departure.
"Consumer protection in Germany needs a new start -- and that can't happen with Ilse Aigner," Kuenast said. "She is incapable, she is unwilling."
But Aigner on Wednesday defended herself, saying that she was working on an "action plan" to be discussed with agriculture ministers from Germany's 16 states next week before briefing EU officials in Brussels on January 24.
"This dioxin case will not be without consequences," she told reporters.
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