All Posts Tagged: Food Standards Agency

No confirmed cause of Clostridium botulinum outbreak

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Richard Mallett

Food Quality News reports that a spokesperson from the Food Standards Agency has said that no confirmed cause of the family outbreak from the Lloyd Grossman Korma sauce, produced by Premier Foods, has yet been found. Investigations are ongoing but it seems to us that this one may slip away. The fact that only one jar was implicated is something of a hindrance to a typical outbreak investigation that looks for common links that may point towards a single mistake or contamination point. It seems perhaps unlikely that it was an overall process error, or further jars would most likely have become contaminated or survival of the organism (if inherited within raw materials) permitted. So it may not necessarily be a HACCP related issue? We wait to see if any more information is released by the FSA.

New EU Food Labelling Regulations

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Richard Mallett

The UK Food Standards Agency reports that the new Food Information Regulation has been published by the EU. This has been designed to make labelling clearer to the consumer. Most of the requirements will be mandatory from 2014 with the nutrition labelling part becoming mandatory from 2016. This may seem a long way off but those who manufacture long shelf life products will really need to start planning now. The regulation is intended to de-mystify, make easier and dispel for instance some of the origin loopholes that were in place.

Update on Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Richard Mallett

The Food Standards Agency has released updates on how our local authorities are progressing with the launch of the Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme. It looks like good progress so far with 180 local authorities publishing over 140,000 ratings from 0 (urgent improvement required) to 5 (very good standards of food hygiene). Now it just needs rolling out properly to the general public, to encourage them to read the ratings, base at least part of their eating out decision on it, and thus to perpetuate the food safety message.

Banoffee tart box. New York Cheesecake inside.

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Richard Mallett

I guess it’s no wonder that extremely stringent packaging check procedures are demanded by Issue 6 of the BRC Global Food Standard when you read this article from the Food Standards Agency. This is a fairly basic and avoidable error. Let’s hope that the Issue 6 BRC Standard requirement to look at root cause when things like this happen will help.

What could be the root causes of packing the food into the wrong packaging? A number of potential scenarios reveal themselves here including:

  • Not removing old packaging before a new production run.
  • Good old fashioned human error and carelessness.
  • Failure to exercise product release procedures to check that everything is as expected before food leaves the factory.
  • Lack of training and real staff involvement in food safety and quality procedures.

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