UK admits to underestimating imports of tainted eggs

By Ilker Girit

ISTANBUL

The U.K.'s food agency on Thursday admitted that more tainted eggs linked to a European food scare have been imported than previously estimated.

"It is likely that the number of eggs that have come to the U.K. is closer to 700,000 than the 21,000 we previously believed had been imported," the Food Standards Agency said.

The news comes amid a health scare in several European countries about possible contamination with a pesticide called Fipronil.

Dutch and Belgian police have been investigating reports of contamination in their jurisdictions while some supermarkets in Germany withdrew stocks of eggs earlier this month. The Netherlands closed 180 poultry farms as a result of the scare.

Tainted eggs were reportedly also exported to France, Sweden and Switzerland.

"While in some European countries eggs containing Fipronil residues have been sold as fresh eggs, in the U.K. this is not the case,” the British agency said.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization classes Fipronil as a Class II “moderately hazardous” pesticide.