This just in: Ireland recalls pork over dioxin contamination
Just weeks before the big ham-fest that is an Irish Christmas. According to Reuters: "Laboratory results of animal feed and pork fat samples obtained on Saturday confirmed the presence of dioxins, it said, with toxins at 80-200 times the safe limits."
Apparently the culprit is a batch of feedstuff that has used by many pig farmers. We've heard a lot about milk contamination lately in other parts of the world, but we're unused to hearing about this sort of contamination closer to home. The thought of sub-standard sausages, bacon and black and white puddings tears quite a hole in the Irish psyche, when you consider the universally loved traditional Irish cooked breakfast (complete with brown bread).
However, the IFA have tried to reassure consumers that "the recall was a precautionary measure" and that most pork products are still safe. In fact, IFA President Padraig Walshe added, "There will be perfectly safe pig meat on sale to consumers I expect from the middle of the week." Tell that to the people who put pork off the menus for Christmas, and probably for a good while longer after that.
Which probably means that the consumer will have to pay much more for their Christmas ham than usual. Makes you re-consider those vegetarian options a lot more closely, I think...
Source: Reuters
14 comments:
Yeh, and just think of all the dioxins we and our children have been consuming since September. I'd love to move to the country and become totally self-sufficient,instead of being at the mecy of government, farmers,and supermarkets.We just don't know what we are eating these days and nobody really cares so long as a profit is made.Even the tap water where I live is unfit to drink and that is a scandalous situation for a country that is /was recently so laden down with cash-where did it all go? Blood pressure rising = better go now and thanks a million for dropping by my blog, you are most welcome any time. Peadar.
Gawd..what a scenario! I heard it on the radio today...it's the talk of Europe : )...and who the heck can trust if it is edible when they say it is...bad news for everyone involved...not to mention the piggies!
It's a bad day for hamming it up, that's for sure... *ouch* ...sorry, I've been hanging around with civil servants this afternoon.
That's awful news!!! Seriously??
I hate to say it but it is the demand for ever more dead pig meat that causes the problem in the first place. You can't even buy a loaf of bread that doesn't have enough poisons in it to keep it fresh (fresh???) for two weeks.
Yes, I am vegetarian but for medical reasons rather than moral and I believe that are supposed to eat a little bit of everything.
Animal feed is full of crap and then we eat our share of it as well. It is harder to contaminate a carrot!
Smug vegetarian here EXCEPT for the fact the only meat I give my non-vegetarian kids (token meat) is ham sambos for school! Argh. Thwarted...
Aside: There is a bizarre synchronicity in the Word Verifications on your blog, Barbara. Remember the bra one?! This one says 'render' Weird!
No 'tis really true, bfs!
Minx, well looking at the butcher's window this morning was revealing: not a sausage in sight! We'll all be going back to making our own, before long.
N, I'm in the same boat, sandwich wise. Tuna and sweetcorn, anyone?
Sadly, carrots were named and shamed a while back by the government. Apparently, the pesticides penetrate the skin and they should always be peeled. They're the one veg I always buy organic.
As for the piggies, well it all seems like a bit of a ham fisted way to go about bringing home the bacon, if you ask me. Which you never will again now ...
Debi, I hope you're not telling us porkies bout dem carrots, though I have to admit, curiously I've never suffered from greenfly- could be an explanation.
Talk about hamming it up, Debi, TotalFE... which reminds me of the joke about the really bad burglars, who were called hamburglers... or was that the one about the thieving burgers... mmm... have to sleep on it, I think.
We avoid preserved meat products like ham because of the nitrates - really bad chemical!
Trouble is it's getting to the stage where it seems like there is very little left!
It's the drizzling out of info that gets me, first the UK isn't affected, which no-one quite believed given the trade between the two countries, and then of course it is.
You think they'd have learned their lesson after BSE! I buy local meat from a local butcher and try not to eat too much ham/pork/bacon despite loving the stuff, especially crackling. (Clarissa Dixon-thingy uses our butcher too) We also get wild rabbit from the butcher, which is a beautiful, all that nimbling of mountain thyme.
I love seeing the live mirror carp in the shops at Christmas, here for the Polish community.
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