Reuters | January 24, 2002
ROME - The United Nations world food body was cited as urging in a statement Thursday that countries should remove the antibiotic chloramphenicol, at the centre of a scare in Europe, from the food chain, stating, "The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has suggested that countries should take steps to stop the use of chloramphenicol in food production."
The story says that FAO's comment was made in relation to a recent food scare over residues of the drug in animal feed.
A German-reared calf has tested positive for chloramphenicol, raising new concerns about use of the powerful antibiotic in the European food chain. FAO was further cited as stating that chloramphenicol is still being applied in some countries in animal production, including aquaculture and that chloramphenicol has been evaluated several times by an internationally recognised scientific committee, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), which concluded that the compound is genotoxic, which means it could cause genetic damage and possibly lead to cancer.
Chloramphenicol is also known to cause a potentially lethal form of anaemia. But the incidence of this is rare, according to JECFA, and probably could not be attributed to residues in food.
Based on this advice, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international body on food standards, stated that a maximum residue limit could not be established and so the antibiotic should not be used in food production.Reuters:
