Meat seized in new food scare

Dutch meat is being seized amid fears it is contaminated

HAMBURG, Germany -- Food products from Holland are at the centre of two separate food scares in Europe.

In both cases it is feared that the drug chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that can halt the production of blood cells in humans, may have been accidentally added to the products.

The first scare relates to a consignment of Dutch veal sold to buyers in the German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

German federal authorities said a mistake in a Dutch laboratory led to Dutch calf meat containing chloramphenicol being cleared as safe and exported to Germany, France and Austria.

A spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia environment and farm ministry said all the meat delivered to the state had been traced to the Cologne area.

"It has all been found today, seized and will be sent for destruction. "None of it was sold," the spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

In Lower Saxony, two batches of calves liver imported by a trader in Harburg, near Hamburg, had been found.

However, a state official said that 13 more that had been sold on to 11 customers had not yet been accounted for.

The second incident concerns a consignment of animal feed containing fish ingredients also believed to be tainted with chloramphenicol.

Investigators in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Austria are trying to track down the consignment.

In Romania, an agriculture ministry spokeswoman said the amounts imported were likely to have been small but stressed that the suspect feed could have been already sold and consumed.

Chloramphenicol's use is normally restricted to combating life-threatening diseases such as anthrax and typhoid because of its dangers.

The antibiotic is restricted to such infections because of the risk of it causing a potentially lethal form of anaemia.

The scares come in the wake of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which is believed to be linked to the human form of the disease variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).

It is believed there is a link between eating beef from cattle suffering from mad cow disease and vCJD, which has so far killed more than 100 people, mainly in the UK.