Fish meal incident leads to the spread of new food panic in Europe

Lead: Hamburg, Jan 17 (Reuters) - a new food scare swept through Europe again on Thursday, involving more than a dozen companies, leading authorities to track animal feed and meat to see if fish meal could be contaminated with chloramphenicol Chloramphenicol is a powerful antibiotic that can prevent the proliferation of human blood cells Veal exported to Germany, France and Austria from a slaughterhouse in the Netherlands has been tested positive for chloramphenicol, leading to concerns that contaminated products may have been placed on supermarket shelves, although officials said no such link was found A spokesman for Germany's Ministry of agriculture told Reuters that it was not possible to comment on any link between contaminated feed and veal The new food scare is only a year away from the mad cow disease that originated in the UK and spread to the European continent, which caused sales of beef to plummet Germany's parliament plans to hold an emergency hearing Friday by the agriculture and Consumer Protection Commission Several European countries rushed to track feed that might have been contaminated with chloramphenicol, but the government's efforts were hampered by the increasing number of companies believed to be handling the feed Alternative feed supplies in the commodity market have seen prices rise A spokesman for the agriculture department in Lower Saxony, Germany, said it was not possible to know the exact number of companies that had accepted the contaminated feed However, the number is higher than expected, and the authorities are actively cooperating with other state governments in the investigation A shrimp contaminated with chloramphenicol was imported from the Far East into the Netherlands and then mixed with 188 tons of fish scraps and shipped to a feed processing plant in Lower Saxony, Germany said on Monday The contaminated shrimp was later mixed in 970 tons of feed meal and was transported by the German company to companies in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Poland and Romania in December Chloramphenicol is only used to treat life-threatening diseases, such as anthrax and tetanus, because the antibiotic can prevent the formation of blood cells, leading to human leukemia Thailand, as the main exporter of frozen shrimp, was shocked by the news and said it would strengthen legislation to ban the use of chloramphenicol by shrimp enterprises and restrict the import of this powerful antibiotic On Wednesday, CBOT's potential alternative feedstuffs, such as soybeans and soybean meal, rose The European Commission will discuss the matter at a meeting of chief veterinarians from 15 EU Member States next week Lower Saxony, Germany, said preliminary tests on contaminated fish scraps were negative, but officials were concerned that some of the feed might have been fed to livestock An official from the Lower Saxony State Department of Agriculture said it would be optimistic if the feed had not been fed He believed that a certain amount of feed had been fed to the livestock.