Paris - The European Commission has demanded an urgent explanation from the French authorities of reports that French companies have been using sewage in the manufacturing of animal feed.
Brussels wrote yesterday to France's Competition, Consumer Policy and Anti-fraud Directorate, seeking information on whether sludge from waste water treatment plants was being used in feed, and what France was doing to end the practice.
The letter was prompted by German television reports that France's Industry Ministry had discovered at least five companies in western and central France mixing sludge from wastewater plants and septic tanks into meat and bone meal used to feed pigs and poultry. Some of the sludge would have contained human faeces.
Animals which consumed the feed had been exported to Germany and other markets, the reports said. They quoted a German scientist as warning that sewage residues could contain dangerous bacteria, antibiotics and chemicals. The French Consumer Affairs Ministry, which was handling the case, issued no comment last night.
What goes into animal feed has become a hugely sensitive issue for consumers since the 1996 "mad cow" crisis in the UK, and the recent scandal over dioxin-tainted food in Belgium. British cows are thought to have developed BSE after eating feed containing remains of sheep suffering from scrapie, a similar condition.
The letter to the French authorities from Mr Joachim Heine, assistant director-general of the Commission's Agriculture Department, describes the information in the German reports as "alarming". "The use of sludge from waste water treatment plants is forbidden in animal feeds by a Commission decision of September 9th, 1991," the letter says.