New recalls reflect EU food chain still exposed to risk

Aflatoxins, food pathogens, harmful Sudan red colours all dogged European food supplies last week, according to data from Europe's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF).

In place since 1979, RASFF​ records all measures taken by national states to ensure food safety, and then communicates the information to other members.

Member states alerted the system this week to a considerable fifty-two 'information notifications' -a risk identified, but other members of the network do not have to take immediate action, because the product has not reached their market - and sixteen 'alerts', triggered by the member state that detects the problem and gives all the network members the information to verify whether the concerned product is on their market.

Again, potentially carcinogenic aflatoxins dominate the information warnings.

Mycotoxins, to which aflatoxins belong, are naturally-occurring toxins produced by certain fungi that can grow on various foods such as cereals, nuts, dried fruits, apples and legumes under certain environmental conditions.

Aflatoxins have been shown to cause cancer in animals and aflatoxin B1, the most toxic, can cause cancer in humans.

In contrast to other mycotoxins, no Tolerable Daily Intakes (TDIs) has been set by Europe for aflatoxins because they have been shown to cause cancer in the liver of laboratory animals by damaging DNA.

They have also been linked to liver cancer in a number of developing countries, where some foods that are an important part of the diet can contain high levels of aflatoxins.

But despite the known risks, in the past seven days nearly a third of all the alerts came from the detection of aflatoxin in a range of nuts. The majority of contaminated products hailed from pistachios originating in Iran.

Health harming food pathogen Salmonella​ hit the 'information' notification table.

Eight incidents of Salmonella​ were identified in foods ranging from fresh peppermint and coriander from Thailand, to soya beans and rapeseed meal originating from The Netherlands and Germany.

Prompting 'alerts', Listeria monocytogenes​ were detected in French merguez sausages, smoked salmon from Denmark and horse meat steaks hailing from Argentina.

Although infections caused by listeria are not as common as for salmonella, they can cause anything from diarrhoea to blood poisoning or meningitis, just as the bacterium can lead to miscarriages or cause disease in foetuses and newborns.

Food safety experts estimate that 100 to 1,000 cells can cause the illness. Cooking kills most of the L. monocytogenes​ cells that can grow at refrigeration temperature, but ready-to-eat products, such as fermented sausages, and smoked fish, are not always cooked by consumers before consumption.

The cause of a UK's biggest ever recall earlier this year - the illegal red dye Sudan 1 - continues to haunt European food supplies.

Evidence that food firms still need to buck up their testing with RASFF reporting two alerts for Sudan 1 in one week. The former in sweet peppers originating from The Netherlands, and the latter in hot ground chilli from Turkey.