The UK's single biggest recall incident now affects 474 different retail products and 150 catering companies, according to the list published on the Food Standards Agency website on 24 February 2005
According to Gill Palmer, a food safety and manufacturing consultant with RSSL who is also a 'BRC' assessor, there is a silver lining to the now-notorious Sudan 1 food colour incident in the UK.
"Traceability systems appear to have worked well in this incident," she says.
"The national press has focused on the huge number of products affected, but imagine the furore if no-one had been able to say which products might have been contaminated.
"Better to know the 600 products that have been affected than to be certain of a few and unsure about the rest".
According to Palmer, "the BRC Standard requires the ability to trace foods forwards (from ingredients to finished products) and backwards (from finished products to ingredients), but it is often the forward traceability information that is found to be lacking.
"In this case, the traceability systems in use by the food companies involved appear to be robust and some of the systems are sufficiently precise to allow the recall to be applied not only to products but to specific batches or date codes.
"What this incident does demonstrate very clearly is that traceability matters, not merely in order to satisfy current legislation, but because good information is key to a quick response when a recall is required."
