more on dioxin in Belgium

[Neil Tangri <ntangri@essential.org>]

     Belgium Food Scandal Spreads
     
     .c The Associated Press
     
      By RAF CASERT
     
     BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The government added Belgian butter to its 
     list of banned foods today, denying residents yet another key 
     ingredient in their increasingly meager diet because of the dioxin 
     food scandal.
     
     Leaders huddled in crisis session for a fourth straight day today, 
     while hundreds of butcher and baker shops closed because the 
     government already has banned sales of Belgian poultry, eggs, fatty 
     beef and pork, and all byproducts.
     
     The food industry federation said the 11-day crisis over tainted 
     animal feed already has cost producers $500 million.
     
     The United States blocked European Union imports of pork and poultry, 
     and Singapore banned all meat products from the 15-nation group. 
     Countries from Switzerland to South Korea took similar measures 
     against Belgian products.
     
     The EU's executive Commission was negotiating with Belgium's 
     government and assessing whether the list of more than 1,000 farms 
     that used some of the 176,000 pounds of dioxin-laced animal feed was 
     sufficient to start freeing up part of the Belgian food market again.
     
     ``The list is now final,'' said Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, 
     ending days of insecurity. Now that the farms have been pinpointed, 
     the government hopes it will be easy to trace any contaminated meat, 
     eggs and byproducts.
     
     The government and leading opposition parties also agreed to set up a 
     special inquiry commission to investigate how cancer-causing dioxins 
     ended up on Belgian dinner plates so easily. Dioxin is a byproduct of 
     the manufacture of some herbicides and pesticides.
     
     The health minister blamed the lack of controls on the products that 
     went into animal feed. Checks on food come under three politicized 
     ministries.
     
     Two officials from the company that provided the animal feed fattener 
     that most likely contained the dioxin remained under arrest on fraud 
     charges. Prosecutors said Monday the pollution could not have been 
     caused by a leak in a mechanical oil tank, increasing the likelihood 
     of fraud.
     
     The scandal was also tearing at the center-left coalition ahead of 
     Sunday's elections. The farm ministry has traditionally been a fiefdom 
     of Dehaene's Christian Democrats and the Socialists said they were 
     outraged how the scandal could take so long to solve.
     
     Belgium's health and farm ministers resigned last week after it became 
     clear they had known about the problem for a month without informing 
     the public or the prime minister.
     
     AP-NY-06-07-99 0658EDT
     
      Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.  The information  contained in 
     the AP news report may not be published,  broadcast, rewritten or 
     otherwise distributed without  prior written authority of The 
     Associated Press. 
     
      


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Neil TANGRI