CEA Calls for Agri Minister's Redsignation

national | environment | press release Monday December 08, 2008 12:14 by Derry Chambers - Cork Environmental Alliance derrychambers at hotmail dot com 026 40946

Dioxins in Pork Products

Environmental Alliance calls on Minister Brendan Smith to resign in the wake of the contamination of pork products with dioxin. The group are also highly critical of the downplaying of the dangers posed to public health by dioxin, the world's number one toxin.

Cork Environmental Alliance
Gort an Éadain
Cill na Martra
Maigh Chromtha
Co Corcaigh

‘phone/fax 026 40946 – 086 871 4665
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PRESS RELEASE

From CEA
Dec 7th 2008
Contact 026 40946 086 871 4665 page 1 of 2

CEA CALL FOR MINISTER’S RESIGNATION

In the wake of the three month long dioxin contamination of Irish pork products the Cork Environmental Alliance has today called for the resignation of Minister for Agriculture, Brendan Smith.

CEA’s Derry Chambers said, ‘This is a catastrophic failure to protect public health and as the person responsible for ensuring such contamination does not occur Minister Smith should now do the honourable thing and step down. It is unacceptable that Irish people have been consuming, for over three months, foodstuffs contaminated with the most toxic chemical known to man’ he continued.

The failure of the Irish food safety monitoring systems to identify this grave risk to public health, instead learning of the contamination from Italian environmental health officials is horrendous to say the least and points to a level of incompetance within Irish food monitoring agencies that would not be be tolerated in any civilized society.

The Alliance is also highly critical of the lack of accurate information on the dangers posed to human health by dioxin laced food.

Instead of being given accurate and precise facts and figures, the people of Ireland are once again exposed to the standing army of apologists for the toxics industry leaping into action in their ongoing struggle to downplay the role of dioxin as the world’s most deadly chemical.

Rather than ensuring the well being of public health all efforts to date seem to be directed at preserving the economic viability of the significant pork producing sector within Ireland’s food manufacturing industry.

Page 2 of 2
Notes

Dioxins are now endemic in our environment but less than 1% have been attributed to natural occurance. The huge increase in environmental contamination since the 1930s is agreed by all sides in the debate to have arisen from industrial and combustion proccesses using chlorine as a precursor.

As far back as 1994 the US Environmental Protection Agency published the results of a major re-evaluation of the toxicity of dioxins as a carcinogen, a neurological toxin and a developmental toxin. That study concluded that there is no safe level of exposure to dioxin. The present WHO, EU and USA recommended levels are based on what is achievable at present rather that what is desirable, ie, zero dioxin contamination of the human body.

Our biological self cleansing system is effective only against water soluble toxins and
dioxin, because it is fat soluble, cannot be excreted from a contaminated human body, unless you are pregnant. A pregnant woman transfers most of the dioxin in her body to the foetus and at birth the mother is dioxin free. For the infant it is another story. This is particularly significant when one considers dioxins’ effect as a developmental toxin.

Dioxin is transgenerational in it’s toxicity. Parents with a significant body burden of dioxin may not exhibit any diagnosable effects but offspring often do, as in the case of Vietnamese victims exposed to the dioxin laced defoliant Agent Orange.

As well as being a known carcinogen dioxin often works at a hormonal level mimicking natural human hormones leading to abnormal pre and post natal development, as well as neurological and other health effects.