Brussels, 18/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - The discovery of a banned antibiotic - chloramphenicol - in veal marketed in Germany, France and Austria by a German company based in Germany, is the object of the European Commission's attention. The information, communicated on Thursday by a joint press release from the Agriculture Ministry of Germany and the Land of Lower Saxony, the regional state where the slaughterhouse with suspect meat is located, was not notified to the Commission as it should have been, via the Community early warning system. This system allows the Commission to be informed of any food incident likely to present a risk for human health and to send on the information to all Member States when the contaminated foodstuffs are exported from a Member State to one or several others. According to spokesperson David Byrne, Commissioner for Consumer Health and Protection, the Commission contacted the German authorities on Friday to ask them to send, as soon as possible, all the information available to them on the origin of this incident and to clarify the reasons whey they failed in their obligation to activate the early warning system.
Chloramphenical is used exclusively for treating certain fatal diseases such as typhus, typhoid or whooping cough, as it presents risks of anaemia due to a reduction in the white and red blood cells. According to the German authorities, its presence in meat intended for human consumption would be due to an "administrative technical error by the Lower Saxony laboratory", which is said to have confused tests made on a contaminated animal and a healthy animal.
The relevant authorities in France, Austria and the two German Länders concerned were informed like the clients of the slaughterhouse which had already begun to withdraw the contaminated meat. The incriminated antibiotic is the same as that found in shrimp waste for the manufacture of fish meal for cattle feed, imported from Asia by a Dutch company and marketed by Germany on its national territory, in Austria and Denmark.
This incident was not notified to the Commission either (the early warning system currently in force does not cover feed for animals, but its extension to cattle feed is imminent). The Commission called on the Dutch and German authorities to provide all information necessary and on the Dutch authorities to provide explanations about their delay in informing Germany of the incident. Both matters will be discussed during the next meeting of the Standing Veterinary Committee scheduled for 22 and 23 January.