As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, back in mid-August, the Ministry of Agriculture reported that the Croatian Kudelic butchers from Bedenica must withdraw dozens of its products from sale “due to the determined pesticide ethylene oxide in the additive used in the production of the spices used in the production of the meat products”, but in reality, the circumstances surrounding the recall and withdrawal of the disputed meat products remain with question marks above their heads.
In a media announcement from the Croatian Kudelic butchers, they complained that the inspection didn’t actually take a single sample of the meat from their butcher shop to check whether their products contained the disputed ethylene oxide, Jutarnji list writes.
And that’s not all, after the sausages were sent off for analysis to an independent food control laboratory specialising in pesticide control, Eurofins from Hamburg didn’t detect the presence of the aforementioned pesticides in any product sent for analysis.
It was unusual for the management of the Croatian Kudelic butchers at the beginning that during the ”inspection, which lasted as long as three days, not a single sample was taken for any analysis of any finished product, or any raw material, spices or additives used in the production of our products.”
However, they complied with the decision to withdraw the products on the grounds that “they don’t comply with the European regulation on the maximum levels of pesticide residues in or on food.”
On top of that, the biggest problem surrounds the aforementioned EU regulation which introduces innovations in food control. For ethylene oxide, it failed to prescribe what the minimum permitted concentration is, but 0.00001 percent is apparently sufficient enough to sound the proverbial withdrawal alarm.
The pesticide that is allowed in third countries like India has thus become the culprit for the big wave of withdrawals that have arrived in the Republic of Croatia and more than 70 different products have been recalled since the beginning of the year alone because of it.
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