A pharmaceutical company and one of its contractors have been fined €40,000 each at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on charges relating to their waste management practices.
AHP Manufacturing, trading as Wyeth Medica Ireland, pleaded guilty through their financial director Tim Brosnan to two counts that on dates in 2000 and 2001 it disposed of or recovered waste materials by means of a company which was not an agreed hazardous waste contractor.
Wyeth Medica Ireland, based in Newbridge, Co Kildare, further pleaded guilty to shipping waste out of the State without a certificate; and being the consignors of waste, in the course of transferring hazardous waste, engaged an agent who mixed hazardous waste with non-hazardous waste on dates in 2001.
Dublin-based Cara Environmental Technology Limited pleaded guilty, through their solicitor Mr Norman Fitzgerald, to four counts of shipping waste out of the State without a certificate on dates between September 18th, 2000 and November 28th, 2001.
Judge Patricia Ryan said the prosecution had accepted at all times that Wyeth Medica Ireland believed its waste was being treated properly by Bioland but that the medical company acknowledged that it failed to take further steps in the matter.
"There has been strenuous efforts made by Wyeth Medica since these offences occurred and they haven't reoccurred and Bioland acted in a criminal fashion in order to make money," said Judge Ryan.
Wyeth had been charged with 18 offences arising out of the export of the waste product of medroxyprogesterone acetate, a contraceptive drug.
The case came to light in May 2002 when pig farmers in the Netherlands noticed that their sows were infertile.
The source of the infertility was traced back to waste water from Wyeth's Newbridge plant, which was exported, recycled and then processed into treacle to be fed to pigs. Some 55,000 pigs were slaughtered, while half of the 7,000 pig farmers in the Netherlands were forced to close their businesses temporarily.