Lurking danger
the latest item to join the list of banned products in Europe because of its possible risk to human health is an antibiotic called avoparcin. The European Union (eu) is going to ban the antibiotic following latest evidence from Denmark and Germany showing that the drug develops resistance to certain antibiotics in animals and its presence in the food chain could eventually reduce the effectiveness of some antibiotics used to treat humans. Avoparcin has been widely used in animal feeds by farmers in most eu countries for 30 years.
The European commissioner for agriculture, Franz Fischler, proposed the ban supported by eu's animal food committee that had voted 14 to one in favour of it. Britain voted against the ban on the grounds that claims about the supposed threat to humans were still unconfirmed. Fischler defended the ban saying that there was "no evidence to exclude the risk of transmission of resistance (to drugs) with certainty, in the absence of further scientific information.'