The Irish pork crisis of 2008 was a dioxin contamination incident in Ireland that led to an international recall of pork products from Ireland produced between September and early December of that year. It was disclosed in early December 2008 that contaminated animal feed supplied by one Irish manufacturer to thirty-seven beef farms and nine pig farms across the Republic of Ireland, and eight beef farms and one dairy farm in Northern Ireland, had caused the contamination of pork with between 80 and 200 times the EU's recommended limit for dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs i.e. 0.2 ng/g TEQ fat (0.2 ppb). The Food Safety Authority of Ireland moved on 6 December to recall from the market all Irish pork products dating from 1 September 2008 to that date. The contaminated feed that was supplied to forty-five beef farms across the island was judged to have caused no significant public health risk, accordingly no recall of beef was ordered. Also affected was a dairy farm in Northern Ireland; some milk supplies were withdrawn from circulation. Processors refused to resume the slaughter of pigs until they received financial compensation.

Pork supplies to a total of twenty-three countries were affected, thirteen within the European Union and the remainder outside in an area across at least three continents. Countries affected include: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Estonia, the UK, France, Portugal, Cyprus, Romania, Russia, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, China, South Korea, Japan and Republic of Singapore.

It is now suspected that the oil that contaminated the offending pig feed with dioxins came from County Tyrone. Some reports suggest the recovery of the Irish pork market would take up to a decade. The Irish government has been criticised over its handling of the incident.

On 18 December 2008, it was disclosed that the beef samples from the affected farms had dioxin levels between 100 and 400 times the legal limit. However the Irish authorities insisted that the threat to public health from Irish beef products, even though the dioxin levels were higher than in the affected pork, was insignificant. On 25 January 2009, Chinese quarantine authorities seized over 23 tonnes of frozen and contaminated Irish pork which was imported by a company in the city of Suzhou in October 2008. On 28 January 2009, Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture was told by Indaver Ireland managing director John Ahern that Ireland could "sleepwalk" into another pork crisis if the Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, continued with his plans to commence widespread use of mechanical biological treatment.

Pork

Background

On the evening of 6 December, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland ordered the recall, withdrawal and destruction of all Irish pork products dating back to 1 September. It was announced that "dioxins & dioxin like PCBs", a group of highly toxic synthetic halogenated organic compounds, had been discovered in pork at levels between 80 and 200 times the EU's recommended safety limits. This contamination, which was first realised on 1 December, came about as a result of contamination of pig feed. The positive results for dioxins and dioxin like PCBs were confirmed on the afternoon of 6 December and announced within hours. The Irish general public were advised to destroy all their purchased pork products as Ireland's Department of Agriculture and the Food Safety Authority had initiated an investigation. and Contaminated feed was used at as many as forty-six farms in the Republic of Ireland of which thirty-seven raised cattle for beef and nine produced pork. Additionally, contaminated feed was used on eight cattle farms in Northern Ireland. Beef products, from cattle who may have been fed contaminated feed, were judged to be safe and were not recalled from market. One cattle farm in Northern Ireland used the feed for beef and dairy cattle, and milk from this farm was removed from the food supply.

Following the discovery, the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen and the Irish Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Brendan Smith attended talks at the Department of Agriculture. Alongside them were the Minister for Health, Mary Harney and Ministers of State Trevor Sargent and Mary Wallace. The opposition party Fine Gael's spokesperson for agriculture, Michael Creed described the discovery as "potentially the biggest threat to the agriculture food sector since the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease".

On the afternoon of 7 December, the FSAI claimed identification of the source as a contaminated ingredient which had been added to pork feed, and said it was now considered that the profile of dioxins located is similar to those found in electronic transformer oils. On the evening of that same day, RTÉ, the state-run broadcaster, reported that the source of the crisis was a processing plant in County Carlow (see #Millstream Power Recycling Limited). A garda investigation was launched. The Association of Pigmeat Processors refused to continue slaughtering pigs, insisting they needed a massive financial package (up to €1 billion) from the Irish government to assist them with the mass recall. The European Union maintained that there would be no funding for the Irish pork industry in the wake of the crisis. Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny criticised the Irish government, calling the crisis "an unmitigated disaster".

Affected products Most pork products are at risk of contamination; however, pork gelatine, products containing pork gelatine such as sweets, crisps and snack foods and sauces with pork or ham content are not.

Health effects of dioxins and PCBs

Dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are two groups of predominately man-made toxic chemicals which, when consumed, affect both the immune and reproductive systems and are classified as probably carcinogenic by the World Health Organization and in the United States by the National Cancer Institute and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.Fact Sheet on dioxin in feed and food. Europa, Brussels, 20 July 2001. The toxicity of dioxins and dioxin like PCBs is mediated by their ability to bind strongly to the aryl hydrocarbon cell receptor that is present in most animals.

Several epidemiological studies have observed a correlation between high levels of dioxins and PCBs in humans and a wide variety of adverse health effects e.g. chloracne, lowering of IQ, dysfunction of the thyroid gland and reduction of thyroid hormone levels, elevated rates of endometriosis in women, higher levels of diabetes in women, precocious puberty in females and subtle developmental delay in children, as evidenced by altered play activity. Males appear to be more sensitive to poisoning by high levels of dioxins & dioxin-like PCBs and are more likely to develop severe symptoms e.g. young men poisoned by TCDD (the most toxic dioxin) are less likely to father boys. See Geusau et al. (2001) who describe the clinical manifestations of two extremely severe (and probably criminal) dioxin poisoning cases.

Much of the hazard posed by dioxins and PCBs comes from their environmental persistence and their lipophilic nature, resulting their propensity to accumulate in the food chain, particularity in the fat of animals. About 80% of human exposure to dioxins and PCBs comes from animal derived foods e.g. poultry, beef and dairy. However, the health effects and risks of long-term, low-level exposure to the general public cannot be observed directly, and are highly controversial. It is not known if the dose response relationship at low-levels of exposure is sub-linear or linear, or has a threshold i.e. harmless at very low levels. Risk assessments are further complicated by the observation that contamination typically involves a complex mixture of related chemicals, the toxicity of each varies and has to be factored according to its Toxic Equivalency Factor (TEF) (where TCDD = 1). The product of TEF is the Toxic Equivalent Quantity (TEQ), and it is this value that is used in risk assessments (an on-line Toxic Equivalency Quantity Calculator ).

The European Union (EU) uses a linear dose response curve at low-levels of exposure, below the point where there are epidemiological data. In other words, the EU assumes there is no safe level of dioxins and PCBs. Accordingly, the European Union sets extremely stringent limits for dioxin and dioxin like PCBs in food, set just above the usual background levels found in various food categories e.g. fish, poultry, beef, pork etc. The limit set for dioxins in pork fat and meat is 1 pg/g TEQ i.e. 1 parts per trillion (ppt) (see swimming pool illustration). The maximum dioxin contamination measured in Irish pork was 0.2 ng/g TEQ fat (200 ppt), equivalent to dispersing 10 drops of TCDD throughout a 2.5 million litre Olympic sized swimming pool.

Millstream Power Recycling Limited Wexford County Council planning file number 20040404 (accessed 10 March 2010) RTÉ News has named the company behind the contaminated animal feed as Millstream Power Recycling Limited, "located just outside Fenagh, Co Carlow" (though the company's website says it is located in Clohamon Mills, Bunclody, Co. Wexford, 17 km away). All production at the plant was stopped in the week before the announcement, when a link between it and the contaminated feed was first suspected. A representative of the firm, David Curtin, denied reports of a use of industrial oil in the contaminated pig feed, saying that, whilst oil is used to power the machinery used for processing, he is not certain that this is the source of the outbreak. The oil, at the firm's insistence, was only ever purchased from "legitimate suppliers" within the Republic of Ireland. The owner of Millstream Power Recycling Limited was named as 43-year-old man Robert Hogg,. who their website explains is their founder, and who got permission to "erect an agricultural feed store" in Clohamon, Bunclody in early 2004.

The Irish pork industry The pork industry is the fourth biggest in Ireland's agriculture sector, worth around €400 million per year to the Irish economy. The country's farms produce over 3 million pigs per annum, almost 50% of which are consumed within the Republic. The remainder is exported, heavily to the neighbouring territories of Northern Ireland and Britain, but it also features in grocery stores and processed meats throughout two continents – Europe and Asia. In 2007, Ireland exported 113,000 tons of pig meat, nearly half of which went to the United Kingdom. Over 500,000 live pigs were also shipped to the UK for slaughter and processing in that country. Ireland's other major customers of its pork are Germany, the buyer of 9,000 tons in 2007; France, Italy and several countries within the boundaries of Eastern Europe, which together purchased over 20,000 tons, Russia, the buyer of 6,600 tons, and China, which came into the ownership of 1,100 tons.

Effects Within two days of the first announcement 1,800 jobs had been lost in the Irish pig industry with a further 6,000 jobs said to be at risk by Ireland's largest trade union SIPTU. Ireland's largest pig meat processor, Rosderra Irish Meats Group Ltd., turned away all of its 850 employees at four plants on 8 December, telling them to sign up for state unemployment benefits. Workers in the pork industry who were laid off in the wake of the crisis, including those from affected plants in Edenderry, Waterford and Kilkenny, carried out a lunchtime protest at Leinster House (government buildings in Dublin) on 11 December. SIPTU organised the demonstration citing "delays in resuming production" and the financial "dire straits" some workers were in as their reasons. Processors halted the slaughtering of pigs until the Irish government promised them financial reparation. c.100,000 pigs were slaughtered and the estimated costs of the crisis was €100 million.

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