Quote :

It has emerged that nine farms in the north have used the contaminated pig-food that has led to a nationwide recall of all Irish pork.

Groups representing retailers and the hospitality sector are gathering at the Department of Agriculture for the latest briefing from the Food Safety Authority on the public health alert.

The Kerryman

It was also on the news that this substance has shown up on other farms in Europe all using feed from an Irish supplier.

Its come out that the Italians identified the problem (in a carcase) in the first place, not Ireland. The FSA gave the impression yesterday that they had found the problem last Monday.

What inspection, if any, is there of this type of pigswill operation in Ireland ?

In the last few years, the traditional sources of pig swill - hotels and restaurantes - have been barred from supplying on "food safety grounds".
Now it transpires that the feed included stale bread from Britain still in its wrappers.

I'm curious as to why a substance, banned in 1979, is present in bread wrappers... which I always thought were made of paper or plastic.

johnfás wrote:

I'm curious as to why a substance, banned in 1979, is present in bread wrappers... which I always thought were made of paper or plastic.

You took the words out of my fingertips.

I've only read the wikipedia entry on PCB but I gather it's still present in "closed" uses - transformers and insulating fluids where it will/should not be leaked into the ecosphere or will/should be reused and recycled or destroyed responsibly. It's bioaccumulative and soluble in fatty tissue so it stays for eight years in your cells.

Someone somewhere fed transformer or insulating fluid to pigs. Lovely. Although the mechanic I use shocked me before by testing my radiator fluid by tasting it for engine oil...

I've seen mechanics do that sort of thing before - they're a mad lot!

Auditor #9 wrote:

johnfás wrote:

I'm curious as to why a substance, banned in 1979, is present in bread wrappers... which I always thought were made of paper or plastic.

You took the words out of my fingertips.

I've only read the wikipedia entry on PCB but I gather it's still present in "closed" uses - transformers and insulating fluids where it will/should not be leaked into the ecosphere or will/should be reused and recycled or destroyed responsibly. It's bioaccumulative and soluble in fatty tissue so it stays for eight years in your cells.

Someone somewhere fed transformer or insulating fluid to pigs. Lovely. Although the mechanic I use shocked me before by testing my radiator fluid by tasting it for engine oil...

It seems to have been a pigswill "recycling" plant in Carlow, according to RTE. It was not the wrappers - they are a side issue, but not a good one.

I would like to know when the Italians first reported this.

Tell him not to drink the cool-aid Audi

A follower of Jim Jones are you, youngdan?

Aren't we all, nobody is getting out of this kip alive. It is enough to give a lad a pain in his maherrousiedouche.

The Week in Politics is having a go at this. Pat Carey the Chief Whip has been landed with the Pork Disaster.

Poor Pat gets landed with most issues these days.

Electronic transformer oils..?

Inspection "on a risk assessment basis" - anyone have an idea what that means ?

There still seems to be contradiction about how this was discovered - at lunchtime it was said that Italy told us there was a problem with a carcase.

I suppose it is early days to expect a coherent account of what happened.

Pat looked like he got battered with a sausage.

How can they have pork back on the shelves in a few days if this feed may have been used since May, when the last report showed OK.

I presum all the animals fed from the millstreet plant will have to be eliminated ..

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Pat looked like he got battered with a sausage.

How can they have pork back on the shelves in a few days if this feed may have been used since May, when the last report showed OK.

I presum all the animals fed from the millstreet plant will have to be eliminated ..

I've heard a worrying amount of meaningless guff talked by people in positions of responsibility.

- Its safe ( but its got to be destroyed ).
- We found it during normal monitoring ( but really the Italians tipped us off ).
- We told you as soon as possible ( but not when the markers were found (was it on Monday) and we are not telling you when the Italians got in touch ).
- We have farm to fork traceability ( but we can't identify the contaminated product on the shelves)
- We have given clear advice ( there is no list of pork by-products that might be contaminated)

BTW, small transformers used in electronics and domestic products have no oil in them. The ones with the oil are the really big ones used by the ESB etc. The oil increases the isolation breakdown so they can make them smaller.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

BTW, small transformers used in electronics and domestic products have no oil in them. The ones with the oil are the really big ones used by the ESB etc. The oil increases the isolation breakdown so they can make them smaller.

Is that PCB stuff treated with enough caution at all. It's very difficult to break it down they say on the radio. They are all saying though that it takes significant exposure over an extended period of time for it to bio-accumulate to an extent where your liver gets jacked up or the tumours start.

At least Tesco's own rashers don't have any transformer fluid - they were all on the shelves when I checked earlier. Phew. All this news is making me hungry for a BLT.

Audi, I know SFA about this PCB stuff. I don't know what it's for or why it's in stuff. Especially, why it's in me rashers ... bastards.

Society is hard work, and it only works when everyone does their job, whatever it may be, to the best of their ability. This clearly is not happening. Those not pulling their weight should be sanctioned somehow.

So it's just an LT tomorrow then ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Audi, I know SFA about this PCB stuff. I don't know what it's for or why it's in stuff. Especially, why it's in me rashers ... bastards.

Society is hard work, and it only works when everyone does their job, whatever it may be, to the best of their ability. This clearly is not happening. Those not pulling their weight should be sanctioned somehow.

So it's just an LT tomorrow then ?

It's a bad sign when we can't get the food end of it right though - something's broken there. Meat is especially a minefield though - is this the problem of being at the top of the food chain and feeding the ones below it your detritus and hoping you'll get away with it ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Audi, I know SFA about this PCB stuff. I don't know what it's for or why it's in stuff. Especially, why it's in me rashers ... bastards.

Society is hard work, and it only works when everyone does their job, whatever it may be, to the best of their ability. This clearly is not happening. Those not pulling their weight should be sanctioned somehow.

So it's just an LT tomorrow then ?

It's a bad sign when we can't get the food end of it right though - something's broken there. Meat is especially a minefield though - is this the problem of being at the top of the food chain and feeding the ones below it your detritus and hoping you'll get away with it ?

Being top of the food chain is risky - poor otters are nearly extinct in Europe. Veg can be dangerous too, when organophosphates are sprayed on them, as happened here in the 1990s once. There have always been food related injury to humans as long as we've been on the planet. The difference now is mass production, so that if there is a problem it is so widespread.

I still just can't get over the whole thing. I would have though that following previous controversies we would have tighter regulation of what goes into animal feed.

Same here, johnfás - I think regulations on paper are better, but they are only as good as implementaton is.
I presume that the feed itself has been recalled, but I haven't heard any announcement about it.

Now there's a market where without regulation what happens ?

I will admit total ignorance of most agricultural related things. However, on the outside it seems that the regulatory bodies have loads of dosh to examine certain things and none to examine others. I have a friend who is (primarily) a chicken farmer in Caaaaavan and everytime I go up there there is a helicopter flying around making sure that nobody is burning stuff that they shouldn't be.

Imagine how much it costs to keep a helicopter in the air in comparison to how much it would cost to properly examine things like this?

This doesn't exactly reassure:

Quote :

In 1936, Harvard University researchers performed experiments with rats exposing them to chemicals at rates similar to those chemical plant workers were exposed to. They reported that "the chlorinated diphenyl [an early name for PCBs] is certainly capable of doing harm in very low concentrations and is probably the most dangerous of the chlorinated hydrocarbons studied. These experiments leave no doubt as to the possibility of systemic effects from the chlorinated naphthalenes and chlorinated diphenyls."

History of PCBs - and wouldn't you know it, our old friends Monsanto - proponents-in-chief of GM foods - in on the act from the outset:

http://www.wsn.org/cwac/pcbfacts.html

The chirstmas ham is a worry Johnfas. Can we agree to keep each other posted on the Christmas thread if we find a safe source? [My mother always recommends the bone end of the leg rather than the gammon if you don't buy a whole one because it has much more flavour with the bone in. This sort of advice might not be so welcome in the present context, however ].