Canned food scare “not so serious”

By Anthony O. Miller

HEALTH Minister Frixos Savvas says he is waiting for guidance from the European Commission on whether the anti-rust coating inside tinned food from Belgium is dangerous enough to human health to warrant restricting its import and sale.

“The official news up to now from the European Commission is that the matter is not as serious as it was initially portrayed in the press,” he said.

“It is being investigated, and we are talking about thousands and thousands of products,” he said.

“They are investigating the principle of chemical reaction between foodstuffs which have been canned in tins coated with this special (anti-rust) varnish or lacquer” in Belgium, especially citrus products and foods of more acidic content.

“They are investigating possible reactions to see if the reaction exceeds the limits set by the European Commission, which is one kilogram per kilo of food.”

Savvas advised anyone worried about possible harm from eating Belgian canned foods to “stay away from using tins… for a few days. We have plenty of food in abundance in Cyprus. We don’t know what’s wrong; nobody knows what’s wrong. There is nothing specific that we can identify or target with a view to taking it off the market.”

“I’m not telling people not to eat canned food,” he said, “but if somebody is super-worried about this, the answer is, it’s up to the individual to consider and decide.”

The current tin-can scare is the second to strike the Belgian food industry this year. In early June, the world began slapping bans on Belgian foods of all varieties after deadly, cancer- causing dioxin was found contaminating Belgian foodstuffs.

The dioxin scare lasted more than a month and decimated the Belgian food industry, from the farm to the supermarket domestically and in the country’s lucrative food export market.