The Belgian dioxin crisis

Concerning what really occurred during the so-called " Belgian chicken dioxin crisis", many uncertainties remain. It is certain that it happened in Belgium, and we know for sure that it was PCBs that were introduced in the alimentary chain. The crisis lasted at least until the 23 of July 1999 on the market through contaminated pork. The fact that the "dioxin chicken crisis" ended up as a "PCB pork contamination" may need some explanation. This paper intends to describe this alimentary crisis, using the following different public sources, namely the official report of the "Parliamentary Dioxin Commission", four articles in the medical literature, numerous reports on newspaper and radio or television for which we used only the material published on their web site as record of radio and television news. First we describe the crisis itself, the contamination and its evolution, then in the second part we analyse the events, and the management of the health consequences on the Belgian population by the Belgian Authorities and the Belgian scientific community.SCOPUS: re.j