Increase in EU food safety warnings

Environmental Health News reports that a record number of warnings about EU food safety were posted in 2007 by the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed. 7,354 warnings were circulated to all EU food safety authorities, 13.5 per cent up on 2006. Is this a case of an increased problem with food safety or an improved reporting system? 42 per cent of the warnings were actually highlighted as a result of border controls. Fish products remained the category with the greatest number of alerts (21%) with other contamination issues including foreign bodies, heavy metal such as mercury in fish, mycotoxins and pathogenic micro-organisms. Follow the link for more details.