Paprika and cumin adulteration, food fraud or accidental?

By 17. February 2015Blog, Health, Risk Management

All is not well for almond and peanut allergy sufferers in the UK. Last week, 3 products containing paprika were recalled due to the presence of undeclared almond.

The FSA yesterday updated their alert on their webpage saying that the contamination had been traced to the company that supplied the paprika for the 3 products. The amount of almond that has been detected is small so the risk is low, but it is there nonetheless.

It turns out that it is not only paprika that has undeclared allergens in it. According to an article in the English newspaper “The Independent” the last cumin harvest in India was disastrous causing the price to skyrocket. Since then, experts have become concerned that cheap peanut and almond shells are being used to adulterate the insufficient amount of cumin. Allergy suffers are advised to avoid shop bought curries.

The good news is that we are not taking this lying down. According to the article the UK government has joined forces with other European governments, the US government, food companies and trade associations to quickly investigate the scale and source of the threat.

We all know the saying that begins “fool me once….”, and after the horse meat scandal the government and those in the food industry are very keen to show they won’t be shamed.

Click here to read more from the FSA website.

Click here to read more on the Independent website.