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3M Food Safety
Radioactive contamination was deposited on some areas of the UK after the 1986 nuclear accident in the former USSR.
Controls were placed on a small number of sheep in the UK to prevent them entering the food chain – 25 years on and some restrictions are still in place.
The FSA recently carried out an extensive survey of radiocaesium levels in sheep on these restricted farms, to assess the potential exposure to consumers.
The study indicated that levels of the radiation rarely exceeded the permitted limit.
Food safety fears are now very low and restrictions have been removed from the majority of the 9,800 originally affected locations.
All controls were lifted in Northern Ireland in 2000 and Scotland in 2010, but 334 farms in North Wales and eight farms in Cumbria remain under some form of restriction.