Australia - Poultry in toxin scare cleared for sale
Date of publication : 11/14/2006
Source : The Australian
Queensland health authorities say 150,000 chickens exposed to potentially toxic levels of a chemical used to control parasites are safe to eat.
A total of 200,000 chickens at two poultry farms near Brisbane were exposed to a food mix containing dangerous levels of Nicarbazin. About 49,000 chickens died.
Queensland Health and Safe Food Queensland has given the surviving chickens the all-clear for sale to the public after testing showed the remaining birds were not contaminated.
It is not known when the poultry will be on supermarket shelves or even when they'll be distributed for sale. Queensland Health acting chief health officer Linda Selvey said today the animals did not retain the chemical and were safe to eat.
She declined to name the two farms affected. "We believe that the meat is suitable for eating and we are obligated under the Food Safety Act not to reveal such identities," she said.
Andreas Dubs of the Australian Chicken Meat Foundation said the names of the farms or where the poultry would be sold were not important.
"It's really quite irrelevant, the names of the farms, in that any chickens that are being sold have been tested by the Government and have been released after extensive tests," he said.
"They are absolutely safe. Some of their colleagues have ingested too much of this chemical, they died but those that survived actually recovered pretty quickly."
Food Standards Australia spokesman Lydia Buchtmann said authorities would not allow contaminated meat onto the market.
"We set the national standards and it's well below that level, so it is perfectly safe to eat. We are not silly enough to put something on the market that wasn't safe," she said.
"This isn't a chemical that hangs around very long and after a few days it's actually not in the meat any more."