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23:10, 10-Aug-2017
Belgium blames Dutch for delays in egg safety scare
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Belgian officials waited for a month for information from Dutch counterparts after finding traces of an insecticide in eggs. Belgium's farm minister said on Wednesday that the Netherlands had known about the contamination since last November.
The contamination has led retailers in several European countries to pull millions of eggs from supermarket shelves, as the scare over its potentially harmful consequences to humans spread.
Belgium's food safety regulator has drawn criticism both at home and abroad after it said it was informed about a first case of fipronil contamination in Belgium in early June but only notified the European Commission in late July.
Dutch and Belgian authorities have traced the source of the insecticide to a supplier of cleaning products in the Netherlands, but Agriculture Minister Denis Ducarme blamed the Dutch for not speeding up the investigation.