General Mills, the owner of the Old El Paso brand that has become the latest product to fall victim to an illegal chemical dye, has warned other manufacturers that they could be sitting on a contamination time-bomb.
The company instigated a Europe-wide recall of its Enchiladas and Burritos dinner kits last week after it emerged that a batch of paprika ingredient from Uzbekistan contained the outlawed cancer-causing colourant Para Red.
But the company’s UK MD, Jim Moseley, said other manufacturers could also fall victim as he knew only of
laboratories in Holland and Germany that were able to test for the presence of Para Red, a chemical relative of the Sudan 1 dye that triggered Britain’s biggest packaged food scare in February.
One of the biggest UK laboratories, Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association, admitted it had only just started testing for Para Red this week.
“To my knowledge, UK facilities can’t check for it, so who knows how many manufacturers may have an issue,” said Moseley.
The discovery was made by Dutch supplier Euroma, as a result of upgrades to its product testing in light of the Sudan 1 scandal.
The FSA put out a national alert last Thursday (April 21) after General Mills contacted the agency a day earlier.
An FSA spokesman said: “An independent scientific expert confirmed that Para Red was very similar to Sudan 1, so we thought it prudent to assume it would have the same effect.”
Para Red was found in less than one part per million of the paprika, resulting in different treatment to the outbreak by individual countries.
While the UK’s FSA operates a zero-tolerance policy to illegal dyes, the Dutch authorities said the risk was so low that no recall was necessary, claimed Moseley.
The two Old El Paso variants had been distributed to Tesco, Morrisons/Safeway, Sainsbury, Asda, Nisa-Today’s, Somerfield, Budgens, Booths, The Co-op and James Hall.
In total, 15 batch numbers are affected, with Best Before dates ranging from October 11, 2005 to November 15, 2005.
Rachel Barnes
The company instigated a Europe-wide recall of its Enchiladas and Burritos dinner kits last week after it emerged that a batch of paprika ingredient from Uzbekistan contained the outlawed cancer-causing colourant Para Red.
But the company’s UK MD, Jim Moseley, said other manufacturers could also fall victim as he knew only of
laboratories in Holland and Germany that were able to test for the presence of Para Red, a chemical relative of the Sudan 1 dye that triggered Britain’s biggest packaged food scare in February.
One of the biggest UK laboratories, Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association, admitted it had only just started testing for Para Red this week.
“To my knowledge, UK facilities can’t check for it, so who knows how many manufacturers may have an issue,” said Moseley.
The discovery was made by Dutch supplier Euroma, as a result of upgrades to its product testing in light of the Sudan 1 scandal.
The FSA put out a national alert last Thursday (April 21) after General Mills contacted the agency a day earlier.
An FSA spokesman said: “An independent scientific expert confirmed that Para Red was very similar to Sudan 1, so we thought it prudent to assume it would have the same effect.”
Para Red was found in less than one part per million of the paprika, resulting in different treatment to the outbreak by individual countries.
While the UK’s FSA operates a zero-tolerance policy to illegal dyes, the Dutch authorities said the risk was so low that no recall was necessary, claimed Moseley.
The two Old El Paso variants had been distributed to Tesco, Morrisons/Safeway, Sainsbury, Asda, Nisa-Today’s, Somerfield, Budgens, Booths, The Co-op and James Hall.
In total, 15 batch numbers are affected, with Best Before dates ranging from October 11, 2005 to November 15, 2005.
Rachel Barnes
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