Brussels, Oct. 5 - European Union food safety experts will take another week to finish inspecting India's efforts to eliminate dioxin contamination from a food gum used as an additive in goods from yogurt and soft cheese to bread.
Incidents of dioxin levels that exceeded the EU's permitted maximum within guar gum imports now appeared to have stopped, officials at the European Commission said on Friday.
Even so, the EU inspection team would continue its visit to the country since it had been planned several weeks ago. The inspectors would then submit their findings to a committee of EU national experts, probably in around two weeks, they said. "They are currently carrying out the mission. If the issue was closed, they wouldn't have gone there ... and it was planned well before, they will do it anyway," one official told Reuters.
"But it's a good thing there is no longer contamination in the EU," the official said.
EU inspectors are likely to remain in India until Oct. 12.
In July, Swiss company Unipektin AG, which supplies guar gum products to EU markets, recalled batches of food additives containing guar gum sent by India Glycols.
India accounts for 80 percent of world trade in guar gum, extracted from the guar bean. As well as being used in animal feed, the gum is incorporated into dairy products such as yogurts, soft cheese and ice cream -- and also bread, pasta, ham, sausages, prepared fish and pastries.
A small handful of the EU's 27 member states were unaffected by the contamination, while many others -- at least 16 countries -- reported recalls of either guar gum or food products.
After the high dioxin levels were detected, national authorities across the EU were warned by Brussels to impound guar gum exports from India Glycols and test consignments for pentachlorophenol and dioxin.
Commission experts have said the dioxin contamination is most likely linked to the presence of pentachlorophenol, a chemical used as a pesticide.