Again dioxin and PCB in the breakfast egg

Recall for dioxin-contaminated eggs from the Emsland

06/20/2012

Dioxin-contaminated eggs enter the market again. In Lower Saxony, a laying hen farm was closed on Monday for detecting dioxin and dioxin-like PCBs in eggs, according to the Lower Saxony Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Consumer Protection and Regional Development.

Again and again, dioxin and PCB have been detected in eggs in recent months. Although the increased discoveries of environmental toxins are at least partly due to the improved controls, they also illustrate what difficulties also exist in free range. Because eggs were often affected by chickens from outdoor farms. This also applies to the current case in which the environmental toxins were detected in the organic free range eggs of a company from the Emsland.

Dioxin and PCB and organic free range eggs
As the Lower Saxony Ministry of Consumer Protection reported in a recent communication, was in the context of operational „Own checks exceed the maximum level for the sum of dioxin and PCB in eggs“ of a farm from the district of Emsland. The legal limit of five picograms per gram of egg fat was significantly exceeded with 19.5 picograms per gram of egg fat. The organic outdoor farm, which has around 12,000 laying hens, has been officially closed since June 18, 2012. Although the marketing of the eggs was stopped immediately after the discovery of environmental toxins, some eggs have already been traded before and were also delivered to other federal states such as Bavaria. Consumers should not consume the eggs with the stamp number 0-DE-0356091 and a best-before date until 14 June 2012, but destroy or return to retail, warned the Lower Saxony Ministry of Consumer Protection. Although there is no acute danger from the contamination of the eggs, as an environmental toxin, dioxin and PCBs can hardly be degraded by the human organism and therefore accumulate in the body, which can cause considerable health impairments in the long term.

Contaminated soil as the cause of environmental toxins in the egg
Dioxin and PCB have been detected relatively frequently in the past few months in open farms in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. In some cases, an explanation of the causes is now available, which shows that contaminated soil has caused the pollution of eggs. Thus, the pawing of chickens in the open air is also a cause for the contamination. While pollutant loads in the conventional laying stations have so far mostly been triggered by contaminated feed, the contamination of the ground is often the cause of dioxin and PCB in the open-air egg of outdoor farms. Screening of soil samples could avoid this problem, however, especially since the contamination of the soil is usually already for years and never occurs suddenly. However, the soil in the open-air farms is usually examined only after the infection has been detected. Basically, there is a health risk from dioxin eggs. (Fp)

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Picture: wrw