Portugal’s food safety authority, ASAE, has issued a statement in the face of the European egg contamination scandal, saying today that the detection of contaminated eggs, purchased in Belgium by a Portuguese construction company, does not represent a risk at the moment, nor does it require any swift action as these eggs “may not even have reached Portugal.”
The reason Portugal has been included in a Europe-wide ban on egg shipments is that the Portuguese company was logged as buying the eggs in Belgium on August 19. The purchase was "transacted for a Portuguese company", but "probably, from the amount purchased, was by a person linked to a company" who bought "about a dozen" of the offending articles.
Despite ASAE's bland assurances, it was misleading the public as this figure later was found to be 180 eggs and that they has been fed to staff at a Portuguese construction company working in Belgium.
"We are in the field to evaluate exactly the quantity purchased, which was small and therefore, everything indicates that it was for personal consumption," ASAE inspector Pedro Portugal Gaspar said, adding, "the eggs may have been consumed outside the national territory."
Gaspar explained that the purchase was transmitted to the Portuguese authorities through a "notification of information" between authorities, a level which indicates that there is no risk and that immediate action is not needed.
As for the health risk, Gaspar pointed out that the toxic pesticide ‘fipronil’ is of moderate risk, so the consumption of infected eggs does not raise a major concern, but the use these eggs in products intended for human consumption is banned.
This single purchase put Portugal on the list of member states affected by contaminated eggs, a list that includes all states except Croatia and Lithuania.
The fraud that led to the contamination of eggs by the insecticide ‘fipronil’ dates to September 2016, said the European Commission a week ago, stating that 34 countries, the majority of them in Europe, have been affected.
Tens of millions of eggs have been contaminated from the disinfestation of laying hens by a fipronil-based product, a strong anti-parasite strictly prohibited in the food chain.
