-FOOD SCANDAL
June 15, 1999
The Associated Press
RAF CASERT
Associated Press Writer

LUXEMBOURG -- This story explained that European Union farm ministers on
Monday sought ways to protect animal feed after serving meat to cows and
motor oil to other animals led to widespread food scandals. The 15 farm
ministers also, the story says, assessed the fallout of Belgium's recent
dioxin food crisis, which has led to bans on EU foodstuffs in many nations
and has cost EU farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales.

French farm minister Jean Glavany, was quoted as saying, "We have to avoid
the collapse of an entire sector of the European farm economy." The EU's
executive Commission was cited as saying that it was too early yet to
calculate the impact of the dioxin scandal and how member states could be
compensated for losses. The Commission was expected to come up with
proposals to improve safety controls by the end of the year. EU Commission
spokesman Gerry Kiely, was quoted as saying,"We need accountability on the
food chain. We need to know what can go in and what must be excluded."

Belgium has, according to this story, come under severe criticism since
dioxin was discovered in much of the food chain earlier this year,
potentially contaminating poultry, eggs, pork, beef and their byproducts.
The government was cited as saying that the dioxin entered the food chain
with the introduction of mechanical oil as an animal feed fattener. The
Belgian government was cited as saying tests show the contamination was
limited to isolated cases and declared 95 percent of its foodstuffs ready
for sale. But many other EU nations are not sure the crisis was an isolated
incident.

Britain's agriculture minister Nick Brown, was quoted as saying, "We have to
get to the bottom of this so it cannot happen again. It is not clear to me
what happened."




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