In its biggest food scandal since mad cow disease, the European Union called June 2 for the destruction of Belgian chickens, eggs and any byproducts that could be laced with cancer-causing dioxin.
AP-Belgium's dioxin food poisoning scandal spread further when the government issued a slaughter ban on pigs, fearful that many of them may also have been infected by the same contaminated animal feed.
In an earlier food scandal, the EU Commission imposed a worldwide export ban on British beef in 1996. The ban came after the British government acknowledged a possible link between a brain-destroying cattle ailment called bovine spongiform encephalopathy and the equally fatal human illness, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
