PRESS CONFERENCE:THE SAFE slaughtering of pigs with no links to the dioxin scare will get under way this morning, the Department of Agriculture's chief veterinary adviser, Paddy Rogan, said yesterday.
He said the aim was to put safe product back on the shelves of our supermarkets and get "Ireland plc" back into the market place.
Ten pig farms out of an estimated 500 are affected by the dioxin contamination.
Mr Rogan said the Department of Agriculture was also working with An Bord Bia to develop a new labelling system "so the consumer will be absolutely crystal clear that this is safe Irish product. That label will tell it all to the consumer."
He estimated that between 20 and 25 countries could have received meat suspected of being contaminated. "I don't believe it will be more than that," Mr Rogan said.
He said it was not yet possible to say how many tonnes of meat would be destroyed. The recalled meat that went back to processors would go to rendering plants for conversion into meat and bonemeal and would then be destroyed.
Mr Rogan said the department was "certainly satisfied" with the co-operation it was receiving from the herd-owners, processors and the retail sector.
He was speaking at a press conference at the Department of Agriculture yesterday evening. Mr Rogan said the food recycler at the centre of the crisis was contacted by the Department of Agriculture one week ago after a pig farmer named him as one of his feed suppliers.
"We have been on this premises at least three times since," he said. "And I have absolutely no doubt that we will in the next coming days, as we require further information, be making further contact with him. [In] our contacts to date, the individual has been extremely co-operative."
He said there was no suggestion that the contaminated substance came from outside this State.
Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer at the Department of Health, said an expert group set up by the Food Safety Authority had established that the levels of exposure were "broadly similar" to those seen in the dioxin scare in Belgium in 1999.
The source of contamination had never been found in the Belgian case but a number of health studies conducted since 1999 had not found any negative effects on the population.
"From the experience in Belgium we don't anticipate any health effects and on that basis we are reassuring people," Dr Holohan said.
There has not yet been mass slaughtering of pigs on the affected farms. Mr Rogan said any slaughtering done to date was solely to obtain sample material on the identified farms for laboratory purposes.
He said he did not expect the pigs on these farms to go into the human food chain.
The focus will now switch to the 38 cattle herds that used feed from the supplier in question.
"We have these farms under active restriction," Mr Rogan said, and samples were being taken from the herds.
Preliminary results are due late this evening or tomorrow morning.
Asked about compensation for consumers and pig farmers, Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith said the question of refunds was between the consumer and the retailer. "There hasn't been any compensation in relation to the pig industry over the years," he said.
He also defended the meat testing system and said the alert showed that there was a "very strong regulatory system in place".
The Food Safety Authority's advice line (1890 336677) received almost 2,000 calls yesterday, its chief executive Alan Reilly said.
"We have about 20 people working on that advice line answering calls. Normally we would have two or three people working on that."
