“The EU has a duty to ensure our farming system is not something we need to worry about when drinking or breathing.”
Dr Milka Sokolović, director general of the European Public
Health Alliance, a non-profit organisation, told us that the findings
were a “public health issue hiding in plain sight”.
“When farms escape the permitting and inspection systems,
pollution, excessive antimicrobial use and antimicrobial resistance also
escape detection – sometimes for years, until a child ends up in
hospital or a community discovers that its water has been contaminated.”
Poland’s poultry sector has been blighted by concerns over
food safety in recent years, including the supply of meat containing
drug-resistant salmonella. One major outbreak poisoned thousands of UK
consumers and was linked to several deaths.
The British Poultry Council, an industry body, said it
wanted reassurances that meat from Polish farms operating without a
permit was not being sent to the UK.
Chief exec Richard Griffiths told us: “We do not want
public trust in poultry meat eroded at a time when food security is a
huge challenge, or UK production to be undermined by imports produced in
systems that would not be allowed here.”
When we asked, the European Commission did not rule out the
possibility of proceedings against Poland in response to our findings.
“Member States must ensure that EU law is implemented, correctly and in a
timely manner,” an EC spokesperson told us, adding that the Commission
“may launch infringement procedures when this is not the case.”
*Name has been changed
