|
(Related to Low Graduation Rates, Jacksonville FL.) |
|
This page: http://www.geocities.com/fltaxpayer/endocrine/26belgiu.html
General Note: Dioxin causes expensive disabilities like ADD/ADHD, diabetes and cancer. Eliminate endocrine disruptors like dioxin and save $4,000/year/household on unnecessarily high Medicare and private medical insurance, disability taxes and extra income taxes to make up for taxes not paid by unnecessarily disabled people. |
|
Ref. 26 Dioxin Crisis Topples Belgian Government ENS 6/15/99 BRUSSELS, Belgium A crushing election defeat for Belgium's governing coalition in Sunday's national elections has followed Europe's worst food contamination crisis since mad cow disease. Contaminated animal feed has been blamed for causing dangerously high levels of the cancer-causing chemical dioxin in Belgian chicken, beef, pork, eggs, milk and byproducts. Worse, the government is said to have known about the contamination but withheld that information from the public and the European Union. All four of the Flemish and French-speaking Socialist and Christian Democrat governing parties lost votes, while some right-wing parties and Belgium's two Green parties scored extraordinary gains that could take them into government. In polls leading up to the election, as many as one in every three Belgians said they planned to switch their voting intentions as a result of the food scandal. The dioxins discovered in Belgian foods in May have emptied Belgian shops of meat and milk products and led to a legion of bans on Belgian, and in some cases all European Union foods, all over the world. On Friday, just before the election, Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene returned the meats, milk and eggs to Belgian shops. He said the government has lists of safe farms. Seventeen percent of the country's cattle farms, 40 percent of pork companies and nearly 50 percent of poultry farms are prohibited from marketing their products. Latest developments in the saga include a call by European agriculture ministers meeting in Brussels today for new controls on the manufacture of animal feeds. Ministers have asked the European Commission to check on current implementation of early warning systems around the European Union and to propose improvements, as well as to undertake a "critical review" of the problems of meat meal and offals plus the disposal of animal carcasses. Meanwhile, the Swiss government said today that it is restricting exports of used food oils, which are thought to be the intermediate source of the Belgian dioxin contamination. According to the Swiss environment agency, used food oils from public collection points will no longer be usable to make animal feeds. In the Netherlands, the government has indicated that tests show no traces of dioxin contamination in milk products. The French government said yesterday that no dioxins had been found in chickens, eggs or beef. Europe's animal feed makers' association has reacted by calling for tighter controls on the raw materials used in animal feed manufacture. The crisis has shown that "existing quality controls...have been inadequate to protect public health," according to the F�d�ration Europ�enne des Fabricants d'Aliments Compos�s pour Animaux. About 1,500 farms used animal feed manufactured by ten companies. Each of them were supplied by the same fat supplier in Gent - the source of the dioxin contamination. The original source of the contamination that entered the food chain in Belgium now appears to be waste PCB oils, possibly illegally disposed of into food oils. According to the European chlorine industry association Eurochlor, official data from the Belgian government shows that the profile of dioxins and closely related furans found in contaminated foods are completely different from those found in combustion products and are similar to those found in PCBs. Toxic, persistent and bioaccumulative, PCBs were banned from sale in the European Union in 1985 but can continue to be used in existing electrical transformers until 2010. The chemicals are also suspected to disrupt hormone systems. Similar incidences of waste PCBs contaminating food supplies occurred in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. Relayed from "Jackie Hunt Christensen" http://lists.essential.org/dioxin-l/ (Dioxin list has now moved but some older posts are still on this address) Main Pages: | Endocrine Disruption Briefing Book | | Attachment List, ED Briefing Book | Attachment Pages: | ADD/ADHD | | Children-Developmental Damage | | Symptoms, Physical-Cognitive | | Diabetes | | Porphyria-LiverSpots | | Porphyria-Suppressed Detox | | Thyroid Disruptions | | Cancer, et al | | Cancer, et al | | Bethune School Dioxin | | Whitehouse School Scandal | | Belgium Govt. Topples-this page | | 314 Toxic Chemicals | | 3700 Porphyrinogenic Chemicals | | Professional Dioxin Reports | | Industry View Dioxin | | Dust Carries Toxics-Dioxin | Cost Estimates, For Medical & Social Problems: | 5 most costly dioxin diseases Overview | Additional Overview Info: | PCB Toxicity by CDC | | 48% Graduation Rate Jax FL | | EDSTAC | Send questions to: | [email protected] | | [email protected] | |