Statement of EFSA on the risks for public health due to the presence of dioxins in pork from Ireland

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) received a request on 8 December 2008 from the European Commission, Directorate General Health and Consumers requesting urgent scientific advice on the risks to public health due to the contamination by dioxins in pork from Ireland. Considering the urgency of this request for advice, EFSA issued a statement following Art. 13 b of the "Decision concerning the establishment and operations of the scientific committee and panels" adopted by the Management Board of EFSA on 11 September 20072. During routine monitoring of Irish pork, elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were found. Further investigations revealed the presence of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs at levels up to 200 pg WHO-TEQ / g fat. The toxic responses to dioxins include dermal toxicity, immunotoxicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity. The toxicity of dioxins is related to the amount accumulated in the body during a lifetime, the so-called body burden. A tolerable weekly intake (TWI) of 14 pg WHO-TEQ/kg body weight (b.w.) has been established by the Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) in 2001. EFSA has based this statement on a limited data set, assuming that the average person has an exposure at the TWI corresponding to a body burden of 4000 pg/kg body weight. EFSA also assumed that exposure at these high levels only began in September 2008 and that effective measures have now been taken to remove this excessive dietary exposure from Irish pork and pork products. EFSA calculated several exposure scenarios for both average and high consumers assuming three different dioxin concentrations in the pork (50, 100, 200 pg WHO-TEQ/g fat), and three different proportions of contaminated meat (100, 10 and 1%). In very extreme cases, assuming a daily consumption of 100% contaminated Irish pork, for a high consumer of pork fat during the respective period of the incident (90 days), at the highest recorded concentration of dioxins (200 pg WHO-TEQ/g fat), EFSA concludes that the uncertainty factor embedded in the TWI is considerably eroded. Given that the TWI has a 10fold built-in uncertainty factor, EFSA considers that this unlikely scenario would reduce protection, but not necessarily lead to adverse health effects. In a more likely scenario with a daily consumption of 10% contaminated Irish pork for a mean consumer of pork fat for the respective period of the incident (90 days), at the highest recorded concentration of dioxins (200 pg WHO-TEQ/g fat), the body burden would increase by approximately 10%. EFSA considers this increase in body burden of no concern for this single event.