Dioxine affair

The Dioxine affair was a political crisis that struck in Belgium during the spring of 1999.Contamination of feedstock with PCB was detected in animal foodproducts, mainly eggs and chickens.Although health-inspectors reported this probem yet in January, measurements where only taken since May 1999, when the media revealed the case, with then VLD-opposition leader Guy Verhofstadt claiming that the government was trying to cover up the so called 'nota destickere', which proved that several secretary's of state where informed much earlier that the food contained PCBs and dioxines.

Political scandal

The dioxine affair started with some complaints of chicken-farmers that noticed increased death among newborn chickens. Already in January, the relation was laid between abnormal levels of dioxine and the increased mortality. However, dioxins are mostly metabolized from PCBs, and PCBs are detected much faster and cheaper, so the dioxine crisis developed into a PCB crisis.

The ministers Karel Pinxten, of agriculture, and Marcel Colla of health issues immediately resigned from their offices, and a commission was installed to investigate the probable sources of contamination and the errors that had been made by the government. Later investigations revealed that the source of the contamination came from an oil-and-fat-recycling company 'Verkest' from Deinze.The fats, that where processed also into animalfeed, contained transformer oil (coolant fluid).

Public concern about the quality of animal food in general became a hot issue in the media. This forced the commission to ban certain recycling streams (like frying oil) from entering the food chain, in order to prevent future contamination. Although later studies proved that there was never a serious danger for human health because the contaminated material was largely diluted during the production of the animalfeed [ [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11896663 "The Belgian PCB/dioxin incident: analysis of the food chain contamination and health risk evaluation."] ] , 7 million chickens and 50.000 pigs where slaughtered and discarded.

Many farmers where closed down for months, and animal food products where banned from the foodmarket.During the investigation, questions where raised if the costs for destroying the food and feedstock where not unnecessary, as it seems obvious that the contaminated food had already passed through the foodmarket during the period January-may. To protect the farmers, the Belgian government promissed to compensate the losses. The crisis also damaged the export of Belgian animal food products. Many Belgians went shopping for meat and diery products in foreign countries. The total costs of the food crisis are estimated at 25 billion franks, or 625 million euro's.

Political implications

The dioxine crisis largely influenced the federal elections of 1999. The governing party, Christian People's Party (CVP), suffered a historic loss and forced premier Jean-Luc Dehaene to end his reign of 8 years. This meant a victory for the Flemish Liberals and Democrats(VLD) and Guy Verhofstadt, who would become prime minister of Belgium until 2007. Also the Agalev-party was able to profit from the public concern around environment and food quality.

Health implications

In 2001 a public report announced that high dioxine levels where detected in blood plasm, compared to other European populations. A direct link to the dioxin crisis seemed obvious. Later comparison with blood-samples that where taken before the crisis disproved this hypotheses. High levels can also be attributed to the dense populations and industry. [ [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V74-4MS9JNV-C&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a04ca45a4921f6ead05c770d6a00c248 "PCDD/F levels in plasma of a belgian population before and after the 1999 belgian PCB/DIOXIN incident"] ]

References

External Links

* [http://www.foodsafetynetwork.ca/articles/316/belgian_dioxin_crisis_risk_comm.pdf Review on Belgium dioxine crisis of 1999]