Pollutants discovered in organic chicken feed

Contaminated chicken feed also delivered to Lower Saxony organic farms

19/12/2014

Organic chicken feed contaminated with pollutants may also have been delivered to organic farms in Lower Saxony, according to the latest release from the Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (LAVES). The farms concerned were temporarily prohibited from delivering organic eggs.

Following the emergence of contaminated organic chicken feed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, inspections of the delivery routes have shown that feed contaminated with pesticides could possibly also have reached Lower Saxony. „It is still unclear whether contaminated feed was also fed in Lower Saxony“, but out „for reasons of preventive consumer protection, the potentially affected farms may no longer deliver organic eggs“, reports the State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety. On Friday, first results from the investigation of the feed samples can be expected.

18 organic farms in Lower Saxony affected
The authorities suspect that organic sunflower presscake from Ukraine is the source of the pollutants. In total, around 3,400 tonnes of the sunflower cake were delivered to a Dutch trading company, of which 235 tonnes were shipped to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania via Denmark, the LAVES reports. In feed samples are there afterwards „the mordant thiomethoxam and the fungicide metalaxyl detected“ Service. Furthermore, a part of the sunflower cake has already been processed in the Netherlands and reached from there to Lower Saxony, but the amount remains so far unclear, so the official release. In Lower Saxony, 18 organic farms would be affected by corresponding feed deliveries, reports the state office. Whether the feed used in Lower Saxony was loaded „or only the batch of sunflower cake traded through Denmark was contaminated, for example during transport or in the local warehouse“, remains unclear according to the country LAVES.

Results of the laboratory tests are not yet available
Last Monday, the competent authorities in the Netherlands informed the Federal Food and Nutrition Agency (BLE) that Dutch companies from the Netherlands had also been supplied with feed containing the potentially contaminated sunflower cake. The results of the extensive and extensive feed analyzes will probably be available during the course of the day. However, according to the current state of knowledge, the Landesamt excludes a health risk to consumers. Despite the contaminated feedingstuffs, no residues of pesticides were detected in the eggs of the farms concerned in all the investigations carried out in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. (Fp)