Netherlands - Pigs - Change the rules when caught?

Let us be practical, rather than emotional, in what is a very difficult situation.

If the meat goes through to the food chain, Dutch, currently high, international credibility on food integrity drops to zero. 

There is a time limit. 

The pyramid system, lately criticised by Britain’s former Chief Veterinarian, Jim Scudamore, can’t be stopped without piles of dead pigs. Something he knows from his Classical Swine Fever and, Foot and Mouth days.

The Dutch have to decide and now.

Even if you think that the pigs and people do not matter, you do not make rules only to break them when caught. 

It would take billions of Euros to try to repair the reputational damage.

Full report here (mechanical translation)

July 25, 2014 10:31

Over 100 farms locked by mistake feed

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Today summit held about the fate of tens of thousands of calves and pigs. On several farms, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, an antibiotic found in animal feed that is prohibited. What's going on? Four questions and answers.

Another meat scandal?

It ​​plays for a while, but slowly but surely, more and more clear about this meat scandal. Slightly more than 100 farms are involved, and it involves both pig and veal farmers. On those farms in animal feed antibiotic discovered that has been banned since 1995 in the Netherlands and the rest of the European Union.

Is it harmful?

Yeah. The antibiotic used to combat streptococci and E. coli, but there is also a substance that is carcinogenic. That sounds bad, but in small quantities that substance is not harmful to humans. Someone who has eaten the flesh, is, according to the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority no "unacceptable health risk. In that regard, we need not worry. The meat does not need to be retrieved. From stores

Yet there are farms close. That is not just right?

There are for this antibiotic strict rules, called a zero-tolerance. That means that if the agent is found, the farms will lock. There may be no animals in or out. The NVWA now investigating whether all farms are infected.

And what happens to the animals on the farms?

There you are summits of place at the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Later in the NVWA. During these consultations, the entire meat industry present. During the day there is a letter that should ultimately give what should be done. Those tens of thousands of animals clarity The policy is that animals should be slain. But because people have walked, no unacceptable health risk is whether it is really necessary.