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| Dutch Government getting "egg on their face" |
As Europe-wide health scare continues, millions of eggs have been pulled
from supermarket shelves across the old continent and dozens of poultry
farms have closed since it emerged on Aug. 1 that eggs contaminated with
fipronil, which can harm human health, were being exported and sold.
Fipronil is widely used to rid household pets such as dogs and cats of
fleas, but is banned by the European Union from treating animals
destined for human consumption, including chickens.
The World Health
Organization says fipronil is "moderately hazardous" in large
quantities, with potential danger to people's kidneys, liver and thyroid
glands.
Food safety authorities in The Netherlands - where farmers are at the
epicenter of the row - this week admitted they received an anonymous
tip-off last November about the use of fipronil in chicken pens but
refuted allegations of negligence.
"It's mind-blowing that there was no connection made then, between
the tip-off and the fact that fipronil may have contaminated both the
chickens and the eggs," Dutch investigative journalist and food writer
Marcel van Silfhout told AFP.
Had the NVWA, the Dutch food and goods watchdog, acted at that point,
the latest trouble to hit the export-dependent Dutch food industry
could have largely been avoided, said Van Silfhout, who penned a
critical book about food safety and the NVWA in 2014.
Martin van den Berg, a professor and senior toxicologist at Utrecht
University's Institute of Risk Assessment Sciences, added: "If there
were investigators who were experts in this area and understood the
impact of fipronil, maybe there would have been a different reaction."
But after consultations following the tip-off, the NVWA decided
"there was no reason to think that fipronil would enter either eggs or
chickens," two Dutch ministers said in a letter to parliament on
Thursday.
Much of the current problem can be traced back to a growing loss of
expertise; the NVWA and its predecessors have faced a series of cutbacks
and trims since 2003, experts say.
The heavily burdened agency - which deals with food security but also
general safety of goods - saw its permanent staff shrink from 3,700
full-time jobs in 2003 to 2,200 over the next decade, according to the
Dutch Christian-based daily Trouw. Though the number is now back up
slightly to about 2,600, many employees are not experts in their fields,
according to Van Silfhout.
"There is no doubt that the problem started with the cutbacks since 2003," he said.
Since then, a series of food scandals to hit The Netherlands,
including the outbreak of Q fever in 2007, which killed dozens of
people, firmly laid the blame on the NVWA.
"A culture of soft enforcement took hold ... instead of clear
independent inspections," Van Silfhout wrote. Pieter van Vollenhoven,
Princess Margriet's husband and a former Dutch Safety Board chairman,
agreed.
"At (farming) companies, economic considerations quickly took the
lead," he told the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad in a recent interview.
"The NVWA must stand up for public interest, for food security. Alas,
the agency in reality is not a food watchdog, but an extension of
economic policy," Van Vollenhoven said.
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Experts say : Netherland's frugal ways caused egg scare - Daily Sabah
