EU accuses Belgium of not banning foods

The European Commission yesterday accused the Belgian government of failing to implement the ban imposed on Monday on the sale or distribution of products originating from farms affected by the dioxin scare.

Mr Gerry Kiely, a spokesman for the Agriculture Commissioner, said that to the Commission's knowledge, the only dairy product removed from shelves in Belgium is butter, while the Commission ban includes all dairy products which cannot be certified as not having originated from the affected farms.

Mr Kiely also said that the government had also failed to control some pork products. "The Belgians have taken selective measures while we would like a more general approach," he said.

The attack on the government's handling of the crisis came only a day after the Prime Minister, Mr Jean-Luc Dehaene, spoke of today lifting the order restricting slaughtering from three-quarters of Belgium's poultry producers and said he hoped he could do the same tomorrow with beef and pork producers.

The Belgian government on Tuesday night provided the Commission with a list of some 1,400 affected farms but both the Italian and German governments have complained at the paucity of information coming from the authorities.

The Italians argue that they cannot identify potentially contaminated exports unless they are given the lists of abattoirs involved which the Belgians are trying still to track down.

Belgian sources say the Commission's list of banned products is far too exhaustive as the levels of contamination are infinitely small and virtually any danger that might have existed is now almost certainly passed. The banned products list runs from beef to pork, chickens, milk and eggs, to mayonnaise, cakes, chocolates, even tiramisu.

But the government appears willing to defy the Commission internally in the expectation that court action would take some three or four years. Exports of listed products, however, are impossible as they require certification. The crisis was sparked last week by revelations that some meat, poultry and dairy products had been contaminated with the cancer-causing chemical, dioxin, introduced into the food chain through animal feed. The origin of the dioxin is still not clear although it is believed to have been introduced in the rendering of fats. The use of motor or transformer oil has been suggested. Lucien and Jan Verkestm, the owners of a firm of renderers of the same name near Ghent, have been jailed for falsifying records in allowing used vegetable oils to be included in their animal fats, but the original contaminated supplies appear to have come from elsewhere, probably Holland.

The first signs of trouble emerged in March when a chicken farmer noticed that hens were keeling over and eggs imploding. The fertility of chicks was also badly affected. He made a claim to his insurance company whose investigations involved the West Flanders veterinary inspectorate. Within weeks they had identified the suspect batch of feed as one distributed in January, but delays in confirming that dioxin was involved meant that the government informed the French and Dutch, who had also received contaminated supplies, only on May 3rd and the public last week. The latest estimates put the cost of the crisis to the Belgian agrifood industry at around £2 billion, although for one group it has been a godsend. The fishermen of Ostend, Nieuport and Zeebrugge are reporting prices up 25 per cent on average and the price of sole, already dear, by a third.

The cost to the government may also be dear. Only days before this weekend's national and European elections, the crisis has put the future of the Social Christian-Socialist coalition in doubt as well as Mr Dehaene's leadership of the Flemish Social Christians.

The opposition Liberals had already been making gains - now they must be in with a significant chance of being able to choose their partners in the next government, a fact reflected in their muted criticism of the incumbents.

But the real danger is from the far-right Vlaams Blok which is certain to capitalise on yet another example of the "corruption of the whole political establishment". Strong gains by the Blok could make Brussels ungovernable.

"Dioxin" Le Soir says, "has poisoned the political landscape." Even ministers have broken ranks to snipe at their fellow members of the government, in one case over the slowness to produce lists of affected farms, in another over attempts to foment linguistic discord on the issue. (Wallonian farming is less intensive than Flemish, and so Walloon politicians have been able to score points off the old enemy.)

An opinion poll in Le Soir found that 65 per cent of respondents said their faith in the government had been dented by the crisis while some 29 per cent said their votes in the elections could be affected by it. Since April 1998 five ministers have been forced to resign in scandals.