TAINTED EGGS IN FRANCE, U.K.

Belgium vows full transparency about why it kept Dutch scandal secret till last month

BRITAIN and France said on Monday some insecticide-tainted eggs may have entered the country, as millions of chickens faced being culled in the Netherlands in a growing European contamination scandal.

Belgium, meanwhile, has vowed full transparency about why it kept the scandal secret despite originally learning in June about the problem involving fipronil, a substance potentially dangerous to humans.

Supermarkets in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have pulled millions of eggs from the shelves since Belgium gave the European Commission the first notification on July 20, while retailers in Sweden and Switzerland have followed suit.

The commission said on Monday under its EU rapid alert system, it had been determined that eggs under suspicion of contamination had also been distributed to France and Britain via Germany.

“It’s now up to the Swedish, Swiss, French and United Kingdom to check because all these eggs are traceable and trackable,” said commission spokesman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen.

Britain’s Food Standards Agency said it was “urgently investigating the distribution of these eggs in the UK” from farms at the centre of the scare, while adding that “the number of eggs involved is very small and the risk to public health is very low”.

It did not give a number but said it represented 0.0001 per cent of eggs annually imported into Britain.

The French government said thirteen batches of Dutch eggs contaminated with fipronil were found at two food-processing factories in central France.