Up to seven countries are affected by fipronil today: United Kingdom, France, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, although the Ministry of Health announced that these contaminated foods have not reached Spain.

What is fipronil, the pesticide that Europe is talking about? It is an insecticide discovered by the pharmaceutical company Rhône-Poulenc between 1985 and 1987 and which was released in 1993. It is used to fight pests, and also pathologies in animals. It has veterinary uses in dogs and cats, and also to control fleas, ticks, flies or lice in cattle, although it is mostly used as an insecticide in crops.

Despite being effective in these functions, its use has harmful effects on the environment and human health, although it is true that it is very difficult to end up contaminated by this pesticide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is a substance “moderately dangerous for humans” and it is necessary to take a large amount of fipronil to lead to health problems in humans. To do this, one would have to ingest around one hundred milligrams of the substance per kilo, something equivalent to eating one hundred adulterated eggs.

The clearest evidence of suffering this contamination responds to symptoms such as headache, nausea, dizziness and in the worst case, kidney problems. In this regard, it should be noted that the eggs infected in any case would have been dusted by fipronil, but that it was used to treat pathologies of the birds from which they came out.

Source: ABC

In Agrama Laboratory we analyze pesticides in all types of foods, always with the latest techniques and newest methods, for more than 20 years, including fipronil, fipronil desulfonil and fipronil sulfone, these last metabolites of the previous one, which can also be present in the food by the degradation of fipronil.

If you want to know if your food contains fipronil or other pesticides or any other contaminant, contact us.

or if you prefer on the following phones: +34 95 490 60 43 / +34 95 511 99 46