Tainted Dutch eggs scandal widens across borders

THE HAGUE: Supermarket sin the Netherlands and Germany moved to halt some egg sales Thursday as hundreds of thousands may have been contaminated by a toxic insecticide in a widening food scandal.

Amid fears the Dutch poultry industry could be facing millions of euros in losses, the country’s biggest supermarket chain Albert Heijn said it was pulling 14 types of eggs from its shelves.

“All the eggs of these 14 kinds have been sent back to the depot and destroyed,” company spokeswoman Els van Dijk told AFP.

It was “an unprecedented” situation for Albert Heijn, she added, saying instructions of the Dutch food authority (NVWA) were being followed.

Damage to Dutch poultry farms is already believed to have run into millions of euros, said Hennie de Haan, president of the National Poultry Owners union.

The NVWA was due to publish its findings later Thursday having closed 180 poultry farms across The Netherlands this week after traces of the insecticide, fipronil, was first found in samples taken from eggs, droppings and meat in late July. Manufactured by Germany’s BASF among other companies, fipronil is commonly used in veterinary products to get rid of fleas, lice and ticks.

But it is banned from being used to treat animals destined for human consumption, such as chickens.

The European Commission said it had been made aware of the egg issue, and EC spokeswoman AnnaKaisa Itkonen’.

“What I can say is that the farms are identified, the eggs are blocked, the contaminated eggs are traced and withdrawn from the market, and the situation is under control.” — AFP