Ireland-50,000 pigs slaughtered and disposed of.

IRELAND

50,000 PIGS SLAUGHTERED.

Some 50,000 of the infection risk pigs in Ireland, have already been slaughtered and disposed of it was revealed on Thursday.

The Department of Agriculture have defended their decision, on the recall of all pork products when the contamination with dioxins was found in pork product.

Meat was recalled from supermarket shelves and shops and 100,000 pigs were identified on farms, with the chance tat they may have been contaminated.

The government set up a 180 million euro emergency fund, to compensate the industry, after the problem was identified as coming from animal feed used by farmers, from a feed mill in County Carlow.

There was a similar problem in Chile in August, however with the lack of subsidies and grants, it was handled in a far less dramatic, low key professional manner.

The newspapers had a field day and the damage done to the industry, was and is 95% the media and 5% a few chemicals in a slice of bacon.