The incident has caused the closure of poultry and pig farms in the state of Lower Saxony, located in northwestern Germany, as a right to prevent public health risks. On the other hand, the European Commission has confirmed the German export two lots of eggs contaminated with dioxins to the Netherlands and United Kingdom. We must wait for an analysis relevant health authorities in the UK said: "the mixing of the eggs will have diluted the levels of dioxins and they are not thought to be a risk to health”.

Dioxins are a group of chemically-related compounds (derived from 2, 3, 7, 8- tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin) that are persistent organic pollutants. Dioxins are found throughout the world in the environment and they accumulate in the food chain, mainly in the fatty tissue of animals. Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause impairment of the immune system, the nervous system, the endocrine system and reproductive functions, and were classified as a "known human carcinogen”.

In the last thirty years several dioxins contamination events have been reported. Most contamination cases have been reported in industrialized countries where adequate food contamination monitoring, greater awareness of the hazard and better regulatory controls are available for the detection of dioxin problems

- Dioxin: remain a decade in the organism - La Razón.es