Dioxin content in food products safe for consumers

The public authorities of the Federal Laender, as well as members of the specialist organisations of the agricultural sector, have analysed numerous samples of eggs, meat, dairy products and feedstuffs to determine their dioxin contents.

Results show that only in a few cases the measured content in eggs, meat of laying hens and pork meat are above the statutory maximum amounts. For dairy products and poultry meat, no exceeding was determined. The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has assessed the health risk for consumers on the basis of these data.

BfR based its first assessment on scenarios in which consumers would have consumed two eggs (of 60 grams) per day over a longer period of time. At the same time it was assumed that these foods had the highest measured contents of 12 picograms per gram fat at each meal.

According to this worst-case scenario, the body burden of a young adult would hardly increase in the course of a month from 10.0 picograms per gram body fat to 10.336 picograms per gram body fat. Even in the theoretical case that somebody had consumed foods with the highest measured dioxin contents for a year, the body burden would increase only moderately.

At the end of the year it would have risen after the consumption of a total of 730 eggs with the highest measured dioxin content by 4 picograms to a total of 14 picograms per gram body fat. Consequently, BfR reaches the conclusion that even for people who recently consumed a larger amount of egg products or pork meat with a dioxin contamination above the respective maximum amount, no health impairment is to be expected, not even in the long term.