A ban on poultry products from more than 1,000 German farms resulting from the use of contaminated animal feed will not affect U.S. commissaries in Europe because those items are imported from outside Germany, according to a Defense Commissary Agency spokeswoman.
“Our eggs come from Denmark,” Leslie Brown, the DeCA spokeswoman said Wednesday by e-mail. “Fresh chicken comes from France, while our frozen chicken is shipped from the U.S.”
The toxic chemical dioxin, linked to the development of cancer in humans, was discovered in eggs and poultry in several German states. Possibly 120,000 contaminated eggs are in circulation in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, while contaminated eggs from the state of Lower Saxony are in circulation at wholesalers in Bavaria, according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The origin of the contamination has been traced to a distributor of a food supplement in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, where oils meant for industrial use in biofuels were distributed for animal feed, according to news reports. The feed was used for pigs and egg-laying hens and other poultry.
Although German officials said the level of dioxin does not pose any real risk to humans, they have warned Germans to look out for potentially contaminated eggs, and at least one state government posted all the serial numbers of eggs that could be contaminated on its website, www.nrw.de/, with English-language option.
