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Foul feed

a new food crisis resembling the dioxin scare has cropped up in Belgium after carcinogenic chemicals were found in chicken feed. While allaying public fears, Belgian health officials have extended their search to the makers of the ingredients for the feed given by a compounder in the western Flemish town of Roeselare.

Traces of polychlorinated biphenyls (pcbs) were found in the samples of feed made by the compounder. "There's no reason to think that the compounder is guilty,' said Pascal Houbaert, spokesman for the federal agency in charge of safety in the food chain. pcbs persist in the environment and Houbaert said the levels of contamination found in the examined samples were 10 times the normal level of 200 microgrammes per kilogramme of fat.

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