Ireland has issued an international warning for people not to consume Irish-produced pork products because they could contain dangerous levels of contaminants.
The government’s departments of health and agriculture on Saturday jointly called for the recall or destruction of all Irish pork produced since Sept. 1 after discovering potentially dangerous dioxins in pigs and pig feed at 80 to 200 times the safety limit.
Dioxins, which are naturally occurring and can enter an animal’s system through its food or environment, accumulate in the pig’s fat. If ingested by humans at sufficient volume, they have been linked to an increased risk of cancer.
In a statement, the office of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said officials from the Agriculture Department and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland were still investigating “the extent of the contamination and to identify the processors and products involved.”
The order dealt the biggest blow to Irish agriculture since the foot-and-mouth disease threat of 2001, when Ireland successfully prevented the spread of the disease from neighboring Britain — but still faced months of lost export business for its beef because of foreign fears.
This time, the government’s warning that Irish pork may have been tainted for months threatens a pig industry worth more than 450 million euros (US$600 million) annually in this country of 4.2 million.
The government asked grocery stores, pubs and restaurants in Ireland to ship back all Irish pork products to their manufacturers as part of the investigation and asked the public “as a precautionary measure not to consume Irish pork and bacon products at this time.”
Ireland’s farms produce more than 3 million pigs a year, nearly half of which are consumed within the Republic of Ireland. But Irish pork is also heavily exported to neighboring Northern Ireland and Britain and appears in grocery stores and processed meats through much of Europe and Asia.
Last year Ireland exported 113,000 tonnes of pig meat, nearly half of that to the UK. Ireland also shipped more than 500,000 live pigs to the UK for slaughter and processing there.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS