The German bakery waste incident; use of a combined approach of screening and confirmation for dioxins in feed and food.
During the last six years several incidents have occurred with dioxins in feed, stressing the need for rapid screening methods for these compounds. The most recent incident was the contamination of bakery waste used for animal feed due to the use of waste wood for drying of the material. In addition to Germany, the material was also shipped to the Netherlands. Levels up to 12ng TEQ/kg have been detected, being about 15 times over the current limit of 0.75ng TEQ/kg. In the Netherlands a combined strategy of screening with the CALUX-bioassay and the HRGC/HRMS confirmatory method was used to rapidly control the incident. Pigs were contaminated by the incident but only to a very limited extent. Despite the rather low limits for pig meat, the CALUX bioassay showed excellent performance, once again confirming the value of this assay.
Hoogenboom
Ron
R
RIKILT Institute of Food Safety, Bornsesteeg 45, 6708PD Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Bovee
Toine
T
Portier
Liza
L
Bor
Gerrit
G
van der Weg
Guido
G
Onstenk
Constant
C
Traag
Wim
W