Every year the Food Standard Agency publishes an annual report with information about the overall food industry, that includes a useful overview of the total number of Food Alerts and Information Notices sent to local authorities who enforce food law.
The worrying picture
Last year there were 47 allergen alerts, which has rocketed to a record number of 60 alerts during 2014. That represents a worrying 27% increase for the food industry, who have ever more standards and risk assessments to deal with every day.
In all other categories, the number of alerts has fallen; such as: microbiological, foreign bodies, and chemical alerts, which evidences that current work in these areas is clearly having an effect. Here are direct links to the reports:2014 report 2013 report
68% are Allergen Alerts
There will be huge concern across the food and retail industry, that the 2014 report indicates a significant rise if allergen alerts across the UK to 68% of the total number of alerts, (or 60 of the total 88 alerts)
Why is it happening and is there a solution?
Stephen Whyte, MD of Leicester based company QADEX says: “Yes, there are three possible ways to combat this growing risk: Allergen Risk Assessments, Allergen Declarations and Allergen Management Labelling Systems. But the amount of data contained in the food industry specifications and supplier audit documents means that there is just too much of it to accurately cross check everything line by line, whenever you receive a new document from a supplier.”
It highlights huge problems that are caused by the lack of synergy between current supplier audit functions, and the existing product specification functions that are inherent in many food businesses.
The QADEX Allergen Management module can automatically solve all of these issues, with a software programme that uses powerful inbuilt validation tools to detect differences and inconsistencies in allergen labelling, removing the need to rely on paper based systems which are not up to date, and manually review and cross check every datum provided by every supplier; for every specification; against a plethora of data gathered from supplier audit processes.
