ANALYSIS OF THE INCIDENCE OF FOREIGN BODIES IN EUROPEAN FOODS

Jozef Čapla

doi:10.15414/jmbfs.2019.9.special.370-375

Abstract

This paper contains a comprehensive review of different types of foreign matter reported in Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) during the period 2016 – 2018. It provides information on incidents of foreign matter contamination discussed and mined in terms of types of foreign bodies, food products involved and geographic distribution within indicated European regions. By analysing the presence of foreign bodies in different European regions (Eastern, Northern, Southern, Western Europe), we found, by means of statistical evaluation, that there were differences in some of the data obtained with respect to the country reporting a foreign body. We found that plastic, glass and metal were the most commonly reported in Western Europe, pests and rubber in Northern Europe. As far as food commodities are concerned, bakery and confectionery products, fruit and vegetables and convenience foods were most frequently reported and the notifications came most often from Western Europe. Notifications from this part of Europe were made with regard to other monitored commodities as well. Regarding the notification type, the most frequent one was an alert and, in the case of a risk decision, serious risk constituted the largest part.

Highlights

The food safety is the main concern of the politicians and inhabitants in whole Europe
Regarding the evaluation of the whole reference period, we compared the number of notifications in the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) in individual years and we evaluated notifications based on the type of a foreign body, food commodity and the type of a notification
We evaluated three specific areas, namely which countries most notifications came from, what foreign body was most frequently found in food, and what food commodity had the most frequent presence of foreign bodies

Summary

Introduction

The food safety is the main concern of the politicians and inhabitants in whole Europe. Several studies have been conducted in previous years to investigate the level of food safety knowledge among food handlers working in restaurants and catering (Sun et al, 2012; Panchal et al, 2013; Pichler et al, 2014), small businesses (Gomes-Neves et al, 2011), and meat processing plants (Ansari-Lari et al., 2010; Jianu and Golet, 2014). There was no such research related to physical contaminants and food safety knowledge among food handlers. Metallic foreign bodies can occur in foods as a result of contamination of raw materials and their improper quality control during reception into the plant, improperly conducted production processes, employees’ negligence, inadequate state of machines and equipment (Codex Alimentarius, 2014). Food manufacturers are very careful when it comes to detection of foreign bodies in food because it can lead to injury to customers

Methods

Results

Conclusion