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Thursday, February 14, 2013
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Confidence lost in EU food chain Cypriot authorities probe local firm as EU mulls tougher test and label rules By George Psyllides
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HE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed increased DNA testing of meat products to assess the scale of a scandal involving horsemeat sold as beef that has shocked the public and raised concern over the continent’s food supply chains. “The tests will be on DNA in meat products in all member states,” European Union Health Commissioner Tonio Borg told reporters after a ministerial meeting in Brussels last night to discuss the affair. The initial one-month testing plan would include premises handling horsemeat to check whether potentially harmful equine medicine residues have entered the food chain, Borg said, with the first results expected by midApril. “This is impacting on the integrity of the food chain, which is a really significant issue for a lot of countries. Now that we know this is a European problem, we need a European solution,” Irish farm minister Simon Coveney told reporters as he arrived for the meeting. In Cyprus, authorities were yesterday looking into a Cypriot company as part of a Europe-wide investigation over fraudulent labelling of horsemeat contained in some food products. The affair has implicated operators and middlemen in a host of EU countries, from abattoirs in Romania and factories in Luxembourg to traders in Cyprus and food companies in France. Authorities said the Limassol-based company was in-
volved in the trade of meat but only through instructions it passed on to other countries. “What is being investigated at the moment is whether this company is implicated or other companies that are intermediaries in the food chain,” said Christos Christou, health services deputy director. “It is not this company that delivered the product to the manufacturers, but it has delivered it to some other companies, which in turn passed it on to the factories.” The affair began in Ireland when horsemeat was found in frozen beef burgers. Christou said various documents have been collected from the company’s offices but no clear conclusions could be drawn yet. “Whatever comes up is conveyed to the European Commission and given to the authorities of the other countries which have the problem,” Christou said.The company does not deal with the Cypriot market. Supermarket chain Carrefour has already announced it was withdrawing a batch of Cannelloni Bolognese as a precaution because they were produced by Comigel, a company linked to the affair. The withdrawal concerns the 600 gramme packaging, bar code 3560070398515. Consumers who bought the product were asked to return it. Alfa Mega supermarkets also announced yesterday it was carrying out all necessary checks, assuring its customers that none of the products on sale contained horsemeat. The European Commission said it was working with the French, Romanian, Dutch,
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TOXIC FACTORIES SHUT DOWN
Residents protest yesterday before the labour ministry announced that it had issued notice, effective immediately, for the closure of the two chemical factories in Pera-Chorio Nisou (Christos Theodorides) SEE STORY PAGE 6
‘Ugliest woman’ buried 150 years after her death THE “ugliest woman in the world” has been buried in her native northern Mexico, more than 150 years after her death and a tragic life spent exhibited as a freak of nature at circuses around the world. Born in Mexico in 1834, Julia Pastrana suffered from hypertrichosis and gingival hyperplasia, diseases that gave her copious facial hair and a thick-set jaw. These features led to her being called a “bear woman” or “ape woman”. During the mid-1850s, Pastrana met Theodore Lent, a US impresario who toured the singing and dancing Pastrana at freak shows across the United States and Europe before marrying her. In 1860, Pastrana died in Moscow after
giving birth to Lent’s son, who inherited his mother’s condition. The son died a few days later, and Lent then toured with the mother and son’s embalmed remains. After changing hands over the ensuing decades, both bodies ended up at the University of Oslo in Norway.
‘AGGRESSION, CRUELTY’ “Imagine the aggression and cruelty of humankind she had to face, and how she overcame it. It’s a very dignified story,” said Mario Lopez, the governor of Sinaloa state who lobbied to have her remains repatriated to her home state for burial.
“When I heard about this Sinaloan woman, I said, there’s no way she can be left locked away in a warehouse somewhere,” he said. Crowds flocked to the small town of Sinaloa de Leyva on Tuesday to pay their respects to Pastrana, who was buried in a white coffin garlanded with white roses. “The mass was beautiful,” said New York-based Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata, who has led a nearly decade-long campaign to have Pastrana returned to Mexico for a proper Catholic burial. “I was very moved. In all these years I’ve never felt so full of different emotions.”