Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former USSR, controls remain on a relatively small number of UK sheep farms. The controls were put in place because some radioactive contamination was deposited on some upland areas of the UK.
Restrictions were originally placed on farms to prevent sheep with unacceptable levels of radioactivity, predominantly radiocaesium, from entering the food chain. Food safety concerns are now very low and, as a result, restrictions have been removed from the majority of the 9,800 UK holdings originally affected.
Only 334 farms in North Wales and eight farms in Cumbria (UK) remain under some form of restriction. All controls were lifted in Northern Ireland in 2000 and in Scotland in 2010.
Source: FSA
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