Food safety surveillance through a risk based control programme: approach employed by the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain.

The principal responsibility of the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC) is to guarantee the safety along the food chain. In order to accomplish this responsibility, the FASFC has developed an integrated official control program to check compliance with various regulations. The original methodology developed and applied by FASFC is presented.

The Belgian PCB/dioxin incident: analysis of the food chain contamination and health risk evaluation.

The Belgian PCB incident occurred at the end of January 1999 when a mixture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) contaminated with dioxins was accidentally added to a stock of recycled fat used in the production of animal feeds. Although signs of poultry poisoning were noticed by February, 1999, the source and the extent of the contamination were discovered only in May 1999, when it appeared that more than 2500 farms could have been supplied with contaminated feeds. This resulted in a major food crisis, which rapidly extended to the whole country and could be resolved only by the implementation of a large PCB/dioxin food monitoring program.