France, UK among 4 countries urged to check eggs

The European Union has notified food safety authorities in Britain, France, Sweden and Switzerland as a precautionary measure that some eggs contaminated with an insecticide might have entered their territory.

The European Commission said Monday that Germany and the Netherlands notified the EU's food safety alert system over the weekend.

Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said the aim was "to share the information so that everybody knows that it's now also up to the Swedish, Swiss, French and to the U.K. national authorities to check."

She said the move is purely precautionary and does not mean that eggs contaminated with the insecticide Fipronil have actually entered those countries.

Belgian and Dutch authorities are investigating how the insecticide came illegally into contact with poultry.

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