CATTLE farmers yesterday openly blamed the government for the latest aflatoxin find in fresh milk.
The farmers said that instead of seizing and confiscating all the infected animal feed imported from India in June, some of it was still being supplied to dairy farmers.
Cattle Farmers Association head Savvas Evangelou expressed the conviction that a large portion of the infected India batch had not been collected and was still in mills’ storerooms.
“There is still quite a lot of the previous load still in animal farm factories and which are mixed [with new, uninfected feed] and supplied to producers… We believe the main damage is caused by these products,” he said.
Evangelou said dairy producers had suffered the brunt of the damage and questioned why nothing had been done to protect farms by destroying the spoiled feed.
The Agriculture Ministry’s Agriculture Department has repeatedly denied the accusations.
Department head Christodoulos Photiou was yesterday adamant the old feed had all been seized.
But Evangelou remained unconvinced and called on the ministry to “tell us how many tonnes were imported, where they were supplied, how much was confiscated and how much exists right now”.
Cyprus Sheep and Goat Farmers Association vice president Spyros Leventis said animal farmers and dairy producers expected to be compensated for damages incurred in the way cheese makers were going to be compensated.
Leventis said although shipments of animal feed from the Ukraine and Romania were being blamed for the latest outbreak, samples that had been taken from both imports “were fine”.
The farmers suspect the elevated aflatoxin levels found in fresh milk at 12 farms so far had been produced after their animals were fed with animal feed that had been mixed with the old, infected feed.
The recent outbreak has left consumers concerned that the carcinogenic toxin has made its way into the food chain.
Nevertheless, Cyprus Milk Industry Organisation Director Andreas Marangos said this was not an issue and that consumers could rest easy that their health had in no way been jeopardised.
Marangos said large dairy producers had strict controls in place which ensured only high quality milk ended up on the market. The CMIO director said that even if a small quantity of milk, such as 500 litres, from a small milk farmer was mixed in with 20 tonnes of milk, any traces of aflatoxin would end up being diluted.
Moreover, small cheese makers that used infected milk would be found more easily because the concentration of aflatoxin in their produce would be higher.
Marangos added that efforts to trace all farms with contaminated milk were ongoing, with the CMIO and Veterinary Services working together to stamp out the problem.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Minister Michalis Polynikis held an emergency meeting with ministry personnel to discuss the issue yesterday. Prior to the meeting, the minister said better controls over imported animal feed had to be introduced. He said the monitoring system needed reorganisation because due to the island’s drought conditions the bulk of animal feed used by farmers was imported. These issues were going to be discussed at the meeting.
THE CYPRUS Union of Consumers and Quality of Life yesterday expressed its disappointment at the authorities’ “irresponsibility and indifference” on the issue and asked for an official and responsible briefing surrounding the truth about how animal feed infected with aflatoxin had been spread yet again.
Issuing an announcement on the latest outbreak, the union said that if the farmers’ suspicions regarding the mixing of contaminated feed with fresh feed were true, then this warranted a police investigation.
It also asked that those “irresponsible” state officials responsible for the latest problem face disciplinary action and that the government speed up its creation of an independent Food Safety Authority.
The Green Party also expressed its concern over the problem and called on the Agriculture Ministry to step up its inspections and to cover apparent shortfalls in the procedure which had allowed a problem that threatened public health to resurface.
“It seems that despite the huge uproar in the recent past and the efforts to step up inspections, there are still gaps in the procedure, which become obvious due to weather conditions (high temperatures and high humidity) that favour aflatoxins’ development,” the party said.
The Greens also said they had expected the government to apportion responsibility following the completion of an investigation into how elevated aflatoxin levels had been found in animal feed and dairy products in June.
