Recycling used cooking oil is supposed to be an ideal way to power your diesel car and conserve crude oil. The exhaust smells like fried chicken or chips, but it's better than dumping the oil in a landfill.
The use of recycled oil went a step too far in Ireland, and now the entire pork producing industry is shut down.
Pigs turned up loaded to the loins with dioxins, an extremely hazardous chemical that is stored in fat once ingested. But how did the pigs eat so much dioxin?
The Environmental Protection Agency went to feed producers to answer that question, and they found that Millstream Recycling had manufactured the tainted feed. But how did their product end up contaminated? All they do is take human food scraps and turn it into pig food.
Except that they had to dry the recycled food scraps, and they used recycled oil to heat the burners that powered the dryers.
Millstream Recycling was licensed to produce pig feed and they passed all their inspections. The problem arose from something that wasn't being ground up and put into sacks for pigs to eat. Recycling food was one thing, but they used recycled oil and never asked what might be in it.
Pig farmers across the island can't sell their animals, and there's not a scrap of pork to be found anywhere. Pork has been recalled and the losses to the meat industry have yet to be counted, but it's millions of euros. The EU is talking about a complete ban on Irish pork until further notice, which translates into huge losses for the pork sector.
All because one feed producer used recycled oil in a bid to do good by the environment or to cut production expenses. But what's an oil supplier doing with dioxin tainted product in the first place?
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