An Irish website selling a "highly toxic industrial chemical" for weight-loss purposes has been shut down amid fears over the product's serious side-effects – including death.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) served a closure order to www.fatburney.com, a website with a registered address in Tipperary, after it was found to be selling and marketing the chemical 2,4-Dinitrophenol (DNP).
The FSAI – which shut the site under EU regulations – said the website's name "implied the substance may be used for weight loss", and urged customers to only buy from established food businesses.
It described the chemical DNP as a "highly toxic" substance that has been "abused as a 'fat-burner' to achieve rapid weight loss."
The side-effects of DNP are "serious and unpredictable", the FSAI added in a statement – and even include death.
"There has been one recorded death in Ireland in 2015 and the UK National Poisons Information Service has recorded 32 deaths in the UK from 2007 to date."
The website is one of two food businesses served closure orders by the FSAI in January.
The other, an outbuilding owned by a butcher in Wicklow, was found to have mouse droppings on the premises, with other issues also discovered which meant the meat used was "not demonstrably fit for human consumption."
Dr Pamela Byrne, the chief executive of the FSAI, said: "The operation of any illegal food business will not be tolerated, and the full power of the law will be brought to bear to stop these food businesses from putting consumers’ health at serious risk.
"The other Closure Order served in January concerned the selling of meat products produced from wild game meat where the carcasses had not undergone the required post-mortem inspection in order for the products to be deemed safe for human consumption," added Dr Byrne.
"If anyone is in any doubt about the legitimacy of a food business, please contact us via our online complaint form www.fsai.ie/makeitbetter and we will follow up on it."
