WORLD REACTION:WITHIN 12 hours of the pork recall being announced be the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, the international press was following the story. The manner in which the news was reported by some papers will have dismayed Irish exporters fearful of the long-term consequences of the crisis.
After 36 hours there were in excess of 1,700 newspaper articles on the crisis in titles spanning the globe.
The largest export market for Irish pork is the UK, which is where the most potentially damaging coverage was to be found.
"Toxic Irish pork is swept off shelves" was how the Sun announced the recall to its readers, while the Daily Mirrorsettled on the even more sensationalist "Poison pork panic: Irish pigs were fed on plastic bags".
The Daily Express, meanwhile, ran the story under the banner headline "Shoppers told: Don't eat toxic Irish pork", with the Daily Mailopting for "British shoppers 'may not be able to tell whether they have Irish poison pork in their fridge'."
The Timesheadline was a slightly more sober "Shops rush to take Irish pork off shelves". It also warned that EU labelling laws meant pork from the Republic could have been labelled British.
The story, under the headline "Dioxin alert in Irish pork" featured in the top five most emailed and most commented on stories in Le Monde, and it was also attracting significant interest from readers of the Singapore-based Straits Timeswhere it appeared second in the lists of most-read stories yesterday afternoon.
El Paisin Spain reported that sources from its ministry of health said no pork had been directly imported from Ireland but that there was concern that contaminated meat might have entered the country via France and Portugal.
The New York Timesconfined its report to just six paragraphs under the headline "Ireland investigating tainted pork", while the Washington Postcarried a similarly short piece headlined "Ireland recalls pork products after dioxin test". The French-based English language news wire AFP went with "Ireland scrambles to contain pork cancer scare", while the Chinese news agency Xinhua has been following the story from early on Sunday morning under comparatively straightforward headlines including "Irish police to investigate pork contamination".
CNN gave the story substantial space, pointing out that "another red flag is being waved over dinner tables this week with warnings from the Irish Government not to eat its pork products".
It drew parallels with BSE, bird flu and the baby milk contamination this year which killed six children in China.
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