2006 UK Food Safety Incidents

In May 2007, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) published its first annual report on food safety incidents. The FSA handled 1,342 investigations into food incidents in 2006, including the national outbreak of Salmonella in chocolate and the contamination of US long-grain rice with an unauthorised genetically modified organism. The report stressed the need for all stakeholders to work in partnership to improve incident handling systems and encouraged more comprehensive reporting. The major categories of incidents in 2006 were:

• environmental contamination (fires and spills/leads) 28%,
• natural chemical contamination (mycotoxins, algal toxins and others) 13%,
• microbiological contamination (salmonella, Listeria, E.Coli etc) 11% and
• physical contamination (pieces of plastic, glass, metal etc) 10%.

In addition, there were on average one to two food recalls and withdrawals every week due to incorrect or missing allergy labelling or other allergy risks. The 50 allergen incidents resulted in 20 Food Alerts for Information, 10 of which were circulated in November and December. 65% of the alerts (13) were targeted at consumers allergic to dairy products. In 2006, there were 211 incidents resulting from microbiological contamination, 2 incidents related to contamination of animal feed, 39 to on-farm incidents, 5 affecting the quality of bottled water and 19 resulting in contamination of food with histamine or algal toxins (natural chemical contaminants). There were 19 pesticides incidents in 2006. 13 were the result of improper use of pesticides or use of banned pesticides on crops. 3 incidents were the result of a pesticide spill, one was the result of a fi re involving a pesticide, one was the result of human error and one an allegation of fraud involving the improper use of a pesticide. There were 74 incidents involving veterinary medicines in 2006, only 6 incidents concerned UK farmed products, being cattle, sheep and horses. The remaining incidents related to imported fish and shellfish from South East Asia, honey from Australia, New Zealand and Argentina and honey and poultry from Brazil. The FSA circulated 81 Food Alerts in 2006, 66 (81%) were Food Alerts for Information, 5 (6%) were Food Alerts for Action, 8 (10%) were Food Alerts containing updated information and 2 (3%) were Food Alerts requiring further action from local authorities.

The full report can be accessed at: http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/incidentsar.pdf