Food News

In this section we repeated alert notices from the RASFF system of the European commission issued in the previous month, which we thought to be noteworthy and of interest to our clients.

In the meantime you may have recognized, that the monthly listing became longer and longer. A repetition in AGROLAB RADAR binds meanwhile many hours, so we decided to stop excerpting this information. In addition the alerts did not differ very much from month to month. The typical threats were also deriving from the known countries. Nuts, raisins and dried fruit with mycotoxin contamination from South of Europe and Middle East countries & USA, salmonella in chicken breast from South America, Poland, and numerous spices and seeds with salmonella, and always often a too high sulfite content in dried fruit from Turkey etc.

You can analyze the RASFF-site conveniently by yourself using several filter options and limit the notification to those which are of direct interest to your business.

We from AGROLAB^GROUP will screen the RASFF listing week by week also in future. From now on we will select and focus only a few really surprising or challenging findings in our opinion, that we will present in this section. Last month we found the following serious alerts noteworthy.

• Allergens: presence of gluten (45.3 mg/kg - ppm) in organic vegan gluten-free crispy chocolate hearts from Germany
• Ethylene oxide: unauthorised substance ethylene oxide in organic guar gum powder from India (8 mg/kg – ppm & 3,2 mg/kg – ppm);
  in spice pastes from the Netherlands (0.19; 0.27; 1.8 mg/kg - ppm); (5 mg/kg - ppm) in sesame seeds from India, dispatched from the United Kingdom;
  in hulled sesame seeds from India (0.19; 0.27; 1.8 mg/kg - ppm) via Croatia and via Poland;
  in hulled sesame seeds from India (1.5 mg/kg - ppm);
  in organic sesame seeds from Uganda (0.16 mg/kg - ppm), via France
  in spice mix with sesame seeds from France, with raw material from Austria
  in seeds to germinate (fenugrec, protein mix) from France
  in psyllium husk powder from India(1.9; 7.6 mg/kg - ppm) and in psyllium husk powder from the United States (64.5 mg/kg - ppm), with raw material from India
  withdrawal from the market of sesame seeds used in spices from France potentially contaminated with ethylene oxide
• Glycidyl esters: glycidyl esters (1650 µg/kg - ppb) in filling fat from the Netherlands
• Heavy metals: lead (2.3 mg/kg - ppm& 15 mg/kg - ppm) in dehydrated chopped onions from India
• Histamine: foodborne outbreak caused by histamine (420 mg/kg - ppm) in frozen tuna loins from Vietnam, via the Netherlands
• Iodine: high content of iodine (466 mg/kg - ppm) in dried seaweed from the Netherlands; high content of iodine (1040 mg/kg - ppm) in organic seaweed (Alaria esculenta) powder from Norway, packaged in Germany
• Listeria monocytogenes: several cases in various meat & marine products
• Mycotoxins: as usual numerous
• PAH: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (63.5 µg/kg - ppb) in dried green jalapeno peppers from China, via Germany
  polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (188 µg/kg - ppb) in lovage ground roots from Poland
• Pyrrolizidine alkaloids: pyrrolizidine alkaloids (2928.10 µg/kg - ppb) in herbal tea from the Czech Republic
• Salmonella: foodborne outbreak caused by Salmonella enterica ser. Enteritidis (presence /25g) in chocolate wafers from Poland
  foodborne outbreak suspected (Salmonella) to be caused by food supplement from Denmark
  and in numerous cases in various meat products
• Shigatoxin-producing coli: shigatoxin-producing Escherichia coli (eae+, Stx1-, Stx2+ /25g) in chilled bovine meat from Slovenia
• Sulphite: in dried fruits
• Tropane alkaloids: atropine (40.1 µg/kg - ppb) and scopolamine (29.1 µg/kg - ppb) in organic millet from the Netherlands
• Unauthorised dyes: unauthorised colour Sudan 1 in curry from India and Turkey; unauthorised colour Orange II (>0.50 mg/kg - ppm) in ground chili pepper from Nigeria
• Vitamins (overdosage): high content of vitamin A (Provitamin A: 13110 mg/kg - ppm) in food supplement from Germany

Link: http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/rasff/index_en.htm

Author: Dr. Frank Mörsberger