AMSTERDAM - Dutch farmers and feed makers said this week they planned to take legal action against two firms they held responsible for the contamination by a banned hormone of pig feed at hundreds of Dutch farms.
Dutch farmers' group LTO-Nederland and Dutch feed industry group Nevedi plan to send claims for damages in the coming days to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, an Irish plant owned by U.S. drugmaker Wyeth and Cara Environmental Technology Ltd., LTO spokesman Jack Luiten told Reuters. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was identified by Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday as the source of hormone-laced contaminated waste water, while Cara, an Irish waste-recovery company, sent the hormone-laced sugar water to Belgium for reprocessing.
"We want to hold the two companies responsible for damages suffered by farmers and the feed industry, because they delivered products for shipment they should not have," Luiten said.
"It's impossible to give an estimate for the damages, but it would run into millions of euros," he added.
He said lawyers were still working on the claim and they would submit it in the coming days.
No one at Wyeth was immediately available for comment, while Cara, which acts as an intermediary in waste transportation, said in a statement that it had not been approached by the LTO or Nevedi and that there were no grounds for action against it.
"We believe there are no grounds to pursue an action against Cara. (We) are an innocent party and acted in good faith throughout," the statement said.
The latest in a series of food safety scandals to hit Europe has deepened after hormone-laced feed was uncovered last month at three farms in the Netherlands, the world's third biggest pork exporting country.
The official number of farms involved has since soared to 355.
Dutch authorities said on Thursday they launched a criminal probe into how a banned hormone had contaminated pig feed at hundreds of farms as the government sought to reassure the EU about control measures.
In Belgium, prosecutors are investigating the bankrupt Belgian firm Bioland as a possible source of the contamination with MPA hormone, or Medroxyprogesterone-acetate, which is banned in the European Union and which experts believe can cause infertility in humans.
The scandal is one of many to hit Europe in recent years, from Britain's mad cow and foot-and-mouth woes to a case of contamination of food with cancer-causing dioxin in Belgium.:
