Germany:Germans have taken the dioxin scare in their stride because most of their pork comes from Denmark and the Netherlands, and because they just love their meat too much. "I could worry about it, but I could be hit tomorrow by a car, too," says Frank, taking a bite from his bratwurst at a Berlin stall yesterday.
Germans are among Europe's biggest meat eaters, consuming 85kg per head annually. Two-thirds is pork, in the form of countless wurst and schnitzel varieties. The country is Ireland's biggest European pork market, worth €13.6 million last year.
The initial response to the scare - from Irish and German authorities - caused some confusion among German wholesale and retail customers. Initially, the food ministry said that Germany had imported just two tonnes of affected Irish meat. That was later corrected to 2,000 tonnes, with still no certainty yesterday how much can be recalled.
The dioxin scare has featured prominently in the German media, even topping the evening news.
In the Karstadt department store in Berlin, meat-counter staff say customers are asking more frequently about the origin of their pork - none of which comes from Ireland.
"We've had so many of these scares now, from BSE to bird flu, that people are more curious about their meat, but there's no sense that they are worried," says one assistant.
It's a different story in the meat trade, where producers say the Irish meat imports, just 0.3 per cent of the market, are more trouble than they are worth. "People in the trade are unhappy with the information - or lack of information - from Ireland," says Thomas Vogelherren of Germany's Federal Meat Industry Association.
"We may yet have a big problem if the lack of information leads to economic difficulties for our members."
Derek Scally
France
During the week in Paris, there was no Irish pork in shops but Bord Bia quality-assurance signs were prominent on the shelves of Monoprix, where Irish beef seemed to be maintaining its popularity. In the busy Marché d'Aligre in Paris's 12th arrondisement, however, opinion was mixed about the crisis. "It's a problem for supermarkets and concerns meat that is intended to be sent to the bigger stores," said one butcher, who added that it could affect consumer confidence in Irish meat. "They have to control the situation straight away."
However, another meat vendor said consumers would not be too concerned. "If it was like the riots of 2005 or mad cow disease, then people would be worried about it. But it's not an epidemic - it's a human error. It will be got over quickly."
About 4,400 tonnes of Irish pork produce are imported each year to France, accounting for only 0.7 per cent of France's total pork imports in 2007. When the story first broke, Le Parisien warned: "Contaminated Irish pork: watch out for what you buy." Devoting a full page to the news on Monday, it said the problem had "revived fears of a new food crisis in Europe". In the same edition, the French minister for agriculture, Michel Barnier, outlined that 95 per cent of pork consumed in France is made there and stressed that "for France, this is not a major health alert".
By Thursday, it emerged that a little over 1,800 tonnes of pork slaughtered in Ireland after September 1st had been imported into France, with 23 organisations having been affected. Of the total, 500 tonnes has been recovered so far, although how much of it is contaminated is unknown.
Mark Rodden
Italy
When I asked Donatella at our local supermarket if she had had many worried inquiries about Irish pork this week, her answer was revealing: "Not a single person has asked me about Irish pork . . . but you know what I think - isn't it strange that this latest food scare should come just before Christmas? I mean, it's very handy to put people off pork products in the run-in to Christmas. It's good business for anyone trying to sell chickens."
Donatella's reaction is not atypical. Food scares are nothing new in Italy. Even this week, as TV news bulletins and newspaper front pages devoted plenty of space to the Irish pork scare, much attention was also focused on the more than 1,100 sheep, goats and lambs from seven different farms in southern Italy that had been slaughtered because they had been "poisoned" by dioxins that might emanate from a nearby iron and steel works.
While there can be no denying the damage done to the image of Irish meat products, it has perhaps been limited by the fact that less than 0.4 per cent of Italian pork imports come from Ireland. Of the 129,000 tonnes of pork exported by Ireland in 2007, only 3,700 tonnes or 0.03 per cent went to Italy.
The alarmist publicity could yet impinge on Irish beef, which accounts for 7 per cent of all imported beef in Italy. For much of the last week, media coverage has focused on reports of the "seizure" of "contaminated" Irish meat products with a variety of consumer groups highlighting these reports as evidence of the lack of proper controls on the part of Italian health authorities.
Some confusion was caused by the fact that not all reports explained that the original dioxin contamination had been detected by the Irish authorities and that it had been the Irish Minister for Agriculture, Brendan Smith, who had decided to withdraw all Irish pork products from the shelves.
Paddy Agnew