Document 5kpEqkvO09YOjYv3jVEZJEwN5

WASHINGTON STAR j Largest Grower tion of up to 800.000 tons of feed t Holly Farms, the world's larg for chickens, fowl and s^ine. Danger From Chickens est poultry raiser, discovered something wrong with the way This feed was capable in turn of raising hundreds of mlilions of chickens. . eggs were hatching at its big Tlie FDA tests Julv 17 showed Declining, Tests Show North Carolina operation in: PCB levels of 1$ to 20 parts per ' By JAMEft WELSH cut UI< Wiitrr chemical, polychlorinated hiphenyl or WB, hd been leaking to tta Iteh^iSpV,b?!n million in the fish meal tithe 10 tho lish meal Plant <" Wilmington plant. Tlio Agriculture Department for more than two months into today reported preliminary lest fish meal processed at a plant in mWailmnuinfag~ctot.u.n.r...e.Mr..ootnfsPaCnBtos,Caolrspo.',wth,aecs!!.mcheD.caikllucbtnieocnfaccmode>ccaubsrurmet da|tllawpsaasrthtfeoeafftrihsehed results aiming tfiac chickens, North Carolina. consulted. r that animals raised on the feed fed on contaminated fish meal in o 10-sfotc nre.i and now being procmcri for reliiil talc, do not contain levels of chemical resi due luflicicnt to harip the pub* lie. The implication of the initial teal results is that chickens on the market now may well be aafr--although chickens sold In June and earlier this month may oot have been. Millions of chickens were feared tainted after the Agriculture officials launched a cra.sh test program Inst Fri day, taking some 400 samples of broilers, and also swine, at slaughterhouses throughout tho Southeast rogion. With 137 of those samples now reported, Dr. Fred Fullerton, elder of Agriculture's meat and poultry inspection division, sold lodny llml traces of PCB wore Ifo,,u,,,,nJd in lthhe. rmna.ljno.rliltoy ooff re>ase>s. But none of the samples re vealed levels higher Ilian that On July 16, Monsanto notified over, the course of weeks would tho Food and Drug Administra build up much higher levels of tion* of tho trouble. FDA tests] the chomlCH) in body tissues. over the next two days, a week A campaign to recall the tair.t-' end resulted in closing the Wil* cd fish meal has only been frac tionally successful, according to. Imington plant. FDA. , Holly Farms told Agriculture [officials of the problem on July I9. , weak ag0 Monday. Bu, ft was not unm a weck ag0 today. u,at FDA w,, >blc ^ supp(y Of the 16,000 ions sent from Hie plant, about 1,000 tons have been returned. Most of the re mainder can be presumed to have been used. ( Agriculture with a list of the 66 PCBs have been used for a firms throughout the Southeast number of years in a wide vurle-; dlscory W . M*l.l *.l.*l W-abl^b^tho Food where the contaminated fish fy of industrial and agricultural I FDA's limit is 5 part* per mil lion of the chemical. ' . |. Fullerton said tho highest found in the current samples tested so far was 1.4 parts per meal had been sold. I operations. Only in recent years Agriculture officials began the! was it discovered that signifi hurry-up testing program the i cant amounts of the chemicals next day. had been building up in the envi Throughout last week and; ronment. I much of this week, the depart-; million. , , ment soft-pedaled the nature of i All but about 30 of the sam the problem, simply saying in a gples, however, showed some ross announcement that some itrace of the PCBs. ists were being run. Of tho 137 tests, 124 were By yesterday Agriculture offi for poultry. Tho remaining 13 cials were telling a fuller story wore for swine. The highest after news stories appeared that level of PCBs found in the swine Holly Farms had to kill about samples was 1.3 parts por mil* 77,000 chickens bocause they lion. {Contained higher than tolerable "We're broathing easier, but'pcB levels, we're still watching closely for The 16,000 tons of fish meal .the rest of the test results," he that were contaminated since: said. `April SO were used in the produc-1 Lab reports on the other sam- - pies are expected by tomorrow. The chemical leaked from a heat exchanger into the fish] meal over a 10-woek period be-j ginning about April 30.. .. . . . HONS 031770