Higher levels of dioxins than those permitted by EU law were found in poultry meat and eggs after hens ate the contaminated feed. 136,000 potentially contaminated eggs were mixed with other non-contaminated eggs to make pasteurised liquid egg in the Netherlands, and this pasteurised liquid egg has been distributed to the UK.
According to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) the situation is being monitored but the risk to health is thought to be non-existent because mixing the eggs means that the levels of dioxins will have been diluted. The FSA says named Kensey Foods, Cornwall – a division of Samworth Brothers and Memory Lane Cakes Ltd, Cardiff – a division of Finsbury Food Group, as the two UK manufacturers who used the pasteurised liquid egg to produce a range of short shelf life cakes and quiches.
These were supplied to the major UK supermarkets and though the FSA say there is no wellness risk to having had these in your diet, supermarkets took the remaining products off of the shelves. However, the products will have now passed their ‘use by’ or ‘best before’ dates.
Dioxins are unwanted by-products of various industrial and combustion processes, and they have no immediate effect on our health. The only way they can cause problems is if they are absorbed into our bodies at high levels for long periods. You mainly find dioxins in foods that are high in animal fat, such as milk, meat, fish and eggs (and foods produced with them) but all foods contain at least low levels of these chemicals. The level of dioxins in your diet varies from person to person, and people are far less sensitive to the possible consequences of consuming dioxins than animals. However, though this strain of dioxin contamination appears to be secure, dioxins have generally been shown to cause a wide range of damage to the wellness of certain animals, including cancer and damage to the immune and reproductive systems.