Brussels, 25/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - After being briefed by Belgian and Dutch experts on the development of MPA contamination (medroxyprogesterone acetate) and the measures that have been taken to avoid further contamination, the Standing Committee on the food chain confirmed on Wednesday evening its strategy consisting of recommending that the countries concerned trace, recall, destroy and test any potentially affected feed and food. After a further alarm warning on Tuesday, however, the Netherlands again placed nearly one thousand farms under surveillance, while Italy (the second largest importer of Dutch pigs after Germany) decreed an embargo one day earlier on all deliveries of pigs from the Netherlands. Nearly 7,000 farms, that is half the pig farms in the Netherlands, are believed to have received potentially contaminated feed over the past few weeks.
Those investigating the matter are now certain that the Belgian company Bioland Liquid Sugars (located in Arendonk near the Dutch border) is responsible for the contamination. The company is said to have knowingly mixed pharmaceutical glucose-based waste with syrup for animal feed, which was then despatched towards the Netherlands before being re-exported in the form of compound feed to several countries. The waste, containing MPA hormones and estradiol, came from an Irish firm belonging to the American Wyeth group, which manufactured contraceptives and hormonal therapies and used glucose for coating its pills. The residue had been passed on through another Irish firm specialised in the treatment of pharmaceutical waste, Cara, from where it was exported to Belgium under the label "non-toxic". According to two Irish firms, Bioland had guaranteed that it could recycle these products in an environmentally friendly way. The Belgian company was licensed to process sugar waste from the food industry but was not entitled to use pharmaceutical waste.