Incidentally...

Posted by Andrew Wadge on May 25th 2007 in Out and about

We’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to handle and prevent food incidents. This is when we’re given information that requires us to intervene because the safety or quality of food could be threatened in some way.

Last year we dealt with 1300 incidents. More recent ones we’ve handled include a recall of cakes and biscuits because they may contain bits of plastic, and a fish product sold in a small number of specialist shops with a label that said ‘keep in a cool dry place’ when it should have been frozen.

If you want to see some more examples of incidents, I suggest you visit the Food Alerts page on our website (you can subscribe to get them as email or texts if you’re interested).

Alternatively, check out our first Annual Report on Incidents, published last week. The information in the report is only as good as the data we receive, and one of our aims is to encourage more comprehensive reporting of incidents. Do have a look and tell us what you think so that we can make the 2007 version even better.

We’re also developing a protocol on communicating during an incident and some of my colleagues had a really good meeting with some food industry representatives this week to discuss how to take that forward.

Finally, we also published a report this week into the international meeting we held in March on horizon scanning and incident prevention. I blogged about this at the time.

It’s only by working in partnership with our stakeholders we can maintain food safety and ensure that consumers are protected. That’s why the Agency was set up seven years ago. Got any comments? Have your say on the blog.

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Expiry dates

Posted by iram (not verified) on 29/05/2007 - 23:50

please, please, request the supermarkets specially morrisons, and asda that they should try to reduce things when they are nearing expiry date but not when they have fungus on them especially, fruits and vegetables. because we try to fulfill the daily requirement which actually becomes a problem when we end up spending on a rotton stuff. please do something about it. children will have more to eat. thank you.

Diet and behaviour

Posted by Joan Breakey (not verified) on 27/05/2007 - 12:14

As a dietitian I have been researching the role of diet in behaviour for 30 years now. I have worked with hundreds of families investigating diet to see what happened. I am keen to hear the FSA research. How would I summarise what I have found?

I think we can now say that additive colours, flavours, some preservatives, and some natural chemicals 'aggravate the underlying problems' in a group of people who are susceptible.

The most interesting finding was that the problem that diet benefitted most was irritable mood. Attention, impulsivity and restlessness changed too.

This is a difficult topic to research as it is not just additives that affect people, and individuals differ in their reactions.