More melamine-style scares ahead, warns FSA

There is no room for complacency when it comes to food contamination, with another melamine or Sudan 1 potentially lurking around the corner unless the food industry remains ultra-vigilant, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has warned.

Speaking at a conference on food contaminants organised by the Society of Food Hygiene and Technology, FSA food contaminants division strategy chief Terry Donohoe said: “We do engage in horizon scanning, but the challenge is we never know what new contaminants are around the corner. However, I think melamine-type risks are the biggest. With the credit crunch and the pressure to drive costs down but supply the same quality product, I think we will inevitably see more of this kind of adulteration as we did with Sudan 1, so we all need to get cleverer. Melamine we should have spotted.”

Jacinta George, an investigative scientist at Reading Scientific Services (RSSL), added: “People are always asking what is the next melamine, but I can’t really answer this; problems come and go and you have to come up with a validated testing system for new contaminants very quickly, which can be quite a challenge.”

Adulteration by unscrupulous traders did not always represent a safety risk, with the widespread addition of cheaper rapeseed or sunflower oil to more expensive sesame or olive oils a good example, she said. However, where Japanese star anise was used instead of the Chinese variety, for example, it could be far more serious (the Japanese version is toxic).

Perhaps due to moves to keep packaging down to a minimum, RSSL had recently observed a rise in the number of products where printing inks had migrated from packaging into food products, said George. “We’re seeing more examples of products with a stale, plastic, solvent-like taste that is caused by photoinitiators such as benzophenones found in these inks.”

More unusual examples of taints detected by RSSL scientists had included chocolate cake with an unpleasant taste (a styrene taint) that turned out to be connected to the new flooring laid in a room in which they had been stored over a weekend, she said. Other issues arose from products left in a lorry with the engine running (which imbued them with a nasty “engine oil aroma”) and foods merchandised alongside medicinal products containing menthol - and picking up the aroma.

As for insects, inaccessible equipment and inadequate cleaning regimes continued to put many food production facilities at increased risk of attack from pests, delegates were told.

While cleaning systems at ground level were often rigorous, said pest control specialist Check Services: “Hard to access high level structures can cause particular problems as dust, flour and debris can settle and serve as little highways for insects. If these are directly above production lines or conveyors, they can cause serious problems. Mice in the roof can also wreak havoc by depositing droppings on to food production or storage areas below.”

Another area often overlooked by manufacturers was the management of pieces of kit that might only be used sporadically for short, specialised runs, it added. “You see this in bakeries where a piece of equipment such as a dough divider has been left for too long and you get an infestation.”

Meanwhile, electrical trunking was “always overlooked”, making it a magnet for flour deposits and flour beetles, and extraction ducting was also a problem. “They suck all the flour and dust away from your factory, but if the filters get clogged up, they can end up being the cause of the problem as they attract flour beetles.”