Irish Pork

SephieG · Irish Pork

As a closet 'conspirisory theorist' I'm wondering if this dioxin scare isn't some form of agricultural or commercial/financial terrorism. I mean, who is responsible for monitoring the content of feed, and how easy is it to introduce large quantities of poisons into the food chain? - (80-100 times higher than the 'safe' level in this case)

We have seen 'accidental' additives in our SW water in recent years - Camelford, Littlehempston and Exeter; Foot and Mouth, BSE, blue ear, scrapie and Bird flu have all reached the news recently - it is cause for concern.

Manta Ray a l'Anglaise

Well I think you could find a conspiracy theory in most bad things that happen, but never the good. . . . look at the amount of uncontaminated food which is consumed for example.

As a lay person it is impossible for me to imagine the quantities of feed mixed up per day in agriculture - millions and millions of tonnes fed each day tractor load after tractor load to livestock. Therefore when an accident happens it concerns huge quantities, wether it be the water supply to Camelford or the importing of bird flu.

It doesn't matter what meat animal you can think of they all eat more than grass and in the past some of the feedstuff has been very suspect.

There were some very interesting conspiracy theories going round re the 2001 F & M outbreak, going from it was imported deliberately to reduce the size of the national herd, or the government knew all about it and laid in stocks of sleepers for burning the bodies, whatever you believe if it is of major concern to you then it's time you looked very closely at what you eat. Buy all your meat from a known and reliable local source and if you don't already, start cooking more and reduce the amount of convenience and pre packed food you consume. . . . then you can stop worrying so much.

MRA

SephieG

Yes, I take on board all you say, and we do choose local and organic produce, (lucky to have so many suppliers down here) but I was considering the wider issue of deliberate adulteration.

Further reading for anyone who's interested.

John Humphrys - The Great Food Gamble
Walker & Cannon - The Food Scandal
Your Daily Food - Doris Grant (1973 - so prophetic!)

and other related books from
Tim Lobstein
Joanna Blythman
Felicity Lawrence
Amanda Ursell

I'm currently reading "Swindled - From poison sweets to counterfeit coffee" by Bee Wilson.

MissMuppet

I have some Wall's sausages in the fridge, I made Dan a sandwich with them the other day... when I realised about the pork problem I checked out the packet but I couldn't see anywhere on there where they were made, I daren't eat the rest just incase!