The Food Standards Agency has recently published another important document: ‘Annual report of Incidents 2008’. An incident is defined as:
‘any event where, based on the information available, there are concerns about actual or suspected threats to the safety or quality of food that could require intervention to protect consumers’ interests.’
The FSA investigated 1298 incidents in the UK in 2008. Fourteen were classified as high level incidents (severe incidents with the potential to cause serious illness or death). These included:
• Melamime in dairy products from China
• Dioxins in Irish pork
• Aflatoxin contamination of figs
• Salmonella agona outbreak
Further information on these incidents is given in the document.
The FSA issued 149 food alerts in 2008 and 59 of these were allergy alerts. These alerts provide advice to both consumers and enforcement officers on what they need to do in the event of a food incident.
There is an online incident report form that businesses can use to quickly submit information on suspected food incidents and the products affected. This can be found at
www.food.gov.uk/foodindustry/regulation/foodfeedform
The FSA launched a new incidents section on their website which can be found within the ‘Food Industries’ section. This provides information on incident response and prevention.
This document provides details of how incidents are classified and managed and gives lots of detail on the incidents that occurred in 2008. It is well worth a read and can be found on our website under research or at: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2009/may/incidents
