Irish Pork Crisis of 2008

The Irish pork crisis of 2008 was a dioxin contamination incident in Ireland that led to an international recall of pork products from Ireland produced between September and early December of that year. It was disclosed in early December 2008 that contaminated animal feed supplied by one Irish manufacturer to thirty-seven beef farms and nine pig farms across Republic of Ireland, and eight beef farms and one dairy farm in Northern Ireland, had caused the contamination of pork with between 80 and 200 times the EU's recommended limit for dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs i.e. 0.2 ng/g TEQ fat (0.2 ppb). The Food Safety Authority of Ireland moved on 6 December to recall from the market all Irish pork products dating from 1 September 2008 to that date. The contaminated feed that was supplied to forty-five beef farms across the island was judged to have caused no significant public health risk, accordingly no recall of beef was ordered. However, it has been estimated that over the course of the next century, approximately 20% of the Irish population may see a reduction in life expectancy by as much as 5 years due to the contamination of pork. Also affected was a dairy farm in Northern Ireland; some milk supplies were withdrawn from circulation.

Within days thousands of jobs were either lost or under threat at pig processing plants across the country, as processors refused to resume slaughter of pigs until they received financial compensation. Pork supplies to a total of twenty-three countries was affected, thirteen within the European Union and the remainder outside in an area across at least three continents. Countries affected include: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Estonia, the UK, France, Portugal, Cyprus, Romania, Russia, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, China, South Korea, Japan and Republic of Singapore.

It is now suspected that the oil that contaminated the offending pig feed with dioxins came from County Tyrone. Some reports suggest the recovery of the Irish pork market will take up to a decade. The Irish government has been criticised over its handling of the incident.

On 18 December 2008, it was disclosed that the beef samples from the affected farms had dioxin levels between 100 and 400 times the legal limit. However the Irish authorities insisted that the threat to public health from Irish beef products, even though the dioxin levels were higher than in the affected pork, was insignificant. On 25 January 2009, Chinese quarantine authorities seized over 23 tonnes of frozen and contaminated Irish pork which was imported by a company in the city of Suzhou in October 2008. On 28 January 2009, Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture was told by Indaver Ireland Managing Director John Ahern that Ireland could "sleepwalk" into another pork crisis if the Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, continued with his plans to commence widespread use of Mechanical Biological Treatment.