EU To Step Up Checks For Radioactive Mushrooms

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

At least it wouldn't matter if they were in the "dark"!

Thursday July 29 1:23 PM ET 

EU To Step Up Checks For Radioactive Mushrooms

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - The European Commission said Thursday 
it would tighten long-standing checks on mushrooms imported from 23 
countries over fears they were still contaminated with radiation as a 
result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.  

It said ``repeated cases of non-compliance with the maximum permitted 
levels of radioactive contamination have been recorded in 
consignments of certain types of mushrooms imported from a number of 
third countries.''  

It singled out wild mushrooms as being particularly prone to 
contamination and said levels of radioactive radiocaesium had 
''hardly declined and may well have increased in the case of certain 
species'' since 1986.  

European Union states would be legally obliged to carry out rigorous 
checks on mushrooms imported from outside the bloc and all products 
would have to be certified safe before they could be sold, the 
Commission said in the EU's Official Journal.  

Countries whose mushrooms would be subject to the new checks were 
listed as: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, 
Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, 
Lithuania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, 
Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, 
Switzerland, Turkey, the Ukraine and the Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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