Food Surveillance Australia New Zealand
Spring 2001
This edition
Soy sauces and chloropropanols - the facts
The Imported Foods Program - the role of AQIS in food monitoring
Introducing - Senior Food Officers
Soy sauces and chloropropanols - the facts
Two soy sauce products, sold under the ' Golden Mountain' brand, and one product sold under the ' Wanjashan' brand have been recalled from sale and distribution in Australia after tests showed they contained unacceptable levels of potentially cancer-causing chemicals know as chloropropanols.
These recalls were undertaken as a result of a survey conducted by ANZFA in Australia of imported and locally produced soy and oyster sauce products. Samples were tested for the presence of the chloropropanols 3-MCPD and 1,3-DCP (see box 1 ) which can contaminate these products during manufacture.
The Australian survey was undertaken following the release of survey results by the UK Food Standards Agency in June 2001. The Food Standards Agency reported contamination with chloropropanols in 22% of a total of one hundred soy and oyster sauces tested and advised consumers to avoid eating these products. At that time, as a precautionary measure, ANZFA also advised consumers to avoid eating some types of soy and oyster sauces made by an acid hydrolysis process (see box 2 ). The suspect soy and oyster sauce products imported from Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are identified on the ANZFA website at www.anzfa.gov.au.
Using information from a number of sources ANZFA prepared a draft risk analysis report entitledMaximum Limit for Chloropropanols in Soy and Oyster Sauces. This document is available on the ANZFA website. The ANZFA Board has decided to recommend to the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Council that a maximum limit of 0.2 mg/kg for 3-MCPD and 0.005 mg/kg for 1,3-DCP be included in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code for soy and oyster sauces imported into or manufactured in Australia and New Zealand.
ANZFA contracted a Melbourne-based laboratory to sample and test a range of soy and oyster sauce brands currently on sale in supermarkets and Asian grocery stores. Initially, eighteen samples from the list of products found to be unsafe by the UK Food Standards Agency were collected and tested for 3-MCPD and 1,3-DCP. The results showed that three samples of Golden Mountain soybean seasoning sauce with different ' best before' dates and one sample of Wanjashan soy sauce contained both cloropropanols above the proposed maximum limits. Subsequently, the Golden Mountain and Wanjashan products were re-sampled and tested. The results were again above the proposed limits. These products were then recalled.
The test results for the Golden Mountain products ranged between 73 and 148 mg/kg for 3-MCPD and between 0.3 and 0.6 mg/kg for 1,3-DCP. The Wanjashan products contained considerably lower levels of the chloropropanols at 0.4 mg/kg for 3-MCPD and 0.05 mg/kg for 1,3-DCP.
With the exception of these products, none of the other imported samples tested were above the proposed maximum limits and are safe to consume.
Six Australian-made soy and oyster products were also sampled and tested for both chloropropanols. None of these products exceeded the proposed limits and are safe to consume. For more details of this ANZFA survey of cholopropanols in soy and oyster sauces, including results, brands and importers, you can check the ANZFA website.
The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) is continuing to hold and test imported soy and oyster sauces and related products at the border. These products are not being released onto the market until test results show that levels of the chloropropanols are below the proposed maximum limits.
Box 1
What are 3-MCPD and 1,3-DCP?
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Box 2 Soy sauce is traditionally produced using a natural fermentation of soy beans process. However, more recently many soy and oyster sauces have been produced using acid-hydrolysed vegetable protein (acid-HVP) as a major ingredient. Acid-HVP is produced by treating proteins from vegetables, such as soy, with hydrochloric acid at high temperatures. This acid hydrolysis process can lead to the formation of chloropropanols. Producers of acid-HVP have found that by carefully controlling the hydrolysis process, the formation of chloropropanols can be reduced to undetectable levels.
What is meant by acid hydrolysed soy sauce?
Editorial
Welcome to the first edition of Food Surveillance Australia New Zealand - a publication designed to keep you up to date with food monitoring activities.
Food Surveillance is an initiative of the Bi-national Food Surveillance and Enforcement Strategy Working Group which has been established to collate information and plan future food monitoring activities in Australia and New Zealand.
If you work for one of the hundreds of government agencies that are involved with food monitoring and surveillance in Australia and New Zealand - or are involved with the development or implementation of food safety programs in a food business, Food Surveillance will have something for you.
Food Surveillance will provide results of national food surveys, background information on recalls, imported foods, the Australian Total Diet Survey and other food monitoring and surveillance activities.
It will also provide a vehicle to share your work. In future editions we will have a classifieds column for information seekers. Whether you' ve completed a local survey of icing bags in city bakeries or investigated the problems of getting food to remote areas - your work contributes to the big food safety picture and is worth sharing.
Please be generous and send an email (a few lines is all that is needed) with a description of the survey/research and a contact name. Others may be doing similar work and through the classifieds column it may be possible to make contact with them and benefit from each other' s experience. Together your resources could go further.
You don' t feel your work will withstand academic scrutiny? Don' t worry! Sharing what didn' t work is just as important as sharing what did - it prevents future surveys from making the same mistakes.
Food Surveillance Australia New Zealand will feature special Survey lift outs. These will provide results of the latest national surveys, together with information to help improve standards.
Become part of the future of food monitoring and contribute to Food Surveillance.
For more information phone contact:
Tony Johnson
Phone: +61 2 6271 2262
email: tony.johnson@anzfa.gov.au
Do you recall Kelly?
Have you been involved with food recalls in your State or Territory? If so, you' ve probably spoken to Kelly Crouch - ANZFA' s Food Recall Officer.
Kelly's job is to relay recall information to States and Territories and other potentially affected parties without delay. She also liaises with food businesses regarding food recalls and provides advice and assistance where required.
Kelly explains that people can sometimes be confused by the terms food recall and food withdrawal. ' Food recalls are conducted to ensure public health and safety, whereas food withdrawals are undertaken for quality reasons, or as a precautionary measure before an official recall.
' A quality defect causing a withdrawal may be due to a product having the incorrect colour or texture. This would not pose a risk to consumers but may result in consumer dissatisfaction or complaints,' explained Kelly.
' ANZFA is not required to be notified of food withdrawals, but this information would be useful to monitor trends,' she said.
Between 1990 and 2000, there were 389 food recalls in Australia. Most of these were due to microbiological contamination (39%) or physical contamination (27%). Other causes for recalling foods have included processing problems, inaccurate labelling, tampering, biotoxins and chemical contamination, (see figure 1).
Origin of food recalls
' Nearly half of all food recalls come about as the result of a consumer complaint,' explained Kelly. ' However, with more companies doing their own testing, about 28% of recalls are generated by the companies own testing programs. Government testing through food monitoring and surveillance activities accounts for a further 25% of recalls.'
Recall systems
The Australian food safety standard 3.2.2 (clause 12) requires wholesale suppliers, manufacturers and importers to have a written recall system that will ensure that unsafe food is returned to the supplier.
A food recall system should contain:
- A list of authorities that should be notified of the recall
- Records of where the product has been distributed
- Advice to be given to customers to ensure that food is returned
- Arrangements for retrieving food that is returned by customers to supermarkets etc
- Arrangements for assessing how much food has been returned and how much remains in the market place.
' The Food Industry Recall Protocol can guide a business in the development of a suitable recall system,' said Kelly.
' It is on the ANZFA web site together with a great deal more information about food recalls including current recalls, those in the last year and details of action officers,' said Kelly.
So - if you need to recall food - who are you going to call?
For more information phone:
Kelly Crouch
Phone: +61 2 6271 2610
Email: kelly.crouch@anzfa.gov.au
Note : New Zealand manages its system for food recalls separately to Australia. It is intended to cover New Zealand' s system in a subsequent edition.
Figure 1: Cases of food recalls 1990-2000
The Australian Imported Food Program - the role of AQIS in food monitoring
You may have seen officers of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) with their beagles at the airport, checking bags for fruit and drugs - but did you know that AQIS officers, as part of the Imported Food Program, routinely check commercial shipments of foods at points of entry into Australia for compliance with the Food Standards Code (FSC)?
The Imported Food Program is jointly run by ANZFA who advises on food risk assessment policy and AQIS who has operational responsibility for inspection and sampling.
A commercial shipment of food is one that is over 10kg. When a commercial shipment of food is imported into Australia, it is placed into one of three inspection categories: risk, active surveillance and random surveillance. ANZFA advises AQIS, based on a risk assessment process, which food belongs into each category. (See Inspection Categories).
How are foods inspected?
AQIS inspectors are required to check imported food against the requirements of the FSC. Inspectors examine all referred foods for labelling compliance and perform a visual inspection of the food. The visual inspection involves examining the packages for defects, and where appropriate, indications of contamination.
At the time of inspection, the officer may take samples for laboratory analysis to ensure compliance with a range of standards including microbiological, chemical residue, additive and compositional requirements.
What happens to food that does not comply?
When a food fails inspection or analysis there are several options available to an importer including:
- treat the food
- re-export the food
- destroy the food, or
- downgrade the food (eg for animal food or fertiliser).
Holding Orders
In the event of an active or random surveillance food not complying with the FSC, a Holding Order may be issued. A Holding Order against a foreign supplier effectively means that the inspection category of the food has been raised to ' risk' status.
This means that all future shipments of that food from the offending supplier are automatically detained and held until compliance with Australia' s requirements is confirmed.
It is the responsibility of importers to ensure that the foods they import comply with the requirements of the FSC. For this reason, importers should acquaint themselves with the relevant standards. Depending on the type of food to be imported, the requirements of the FSC can be complex. If importers are unsure of whether or not their foods will comply with the FSC, it is recommended that they seek independent food technology and/or legal advice.
For more information check out ' Quarantine and Inspection' at http://www.affa.gov.au or contact Peter Maple on +61 2 6272 5419.
Inspection categories
Risk categorised food
- Has potential to pose a high or medium risk to public health e.g. soft cheese, prawns and chicken
- 100% of shipments are referred by Customs to AQIS for inspection.
- Switching rules reward producers with a good history of compliance with Australian requirements by reducing their inspection intensity.
- For example if a producer sends soft cheese to Australia it undergoes the following inspection process.
- At ' tightened level' every shipment is inspected. When 5 consecutive shipments have demonstrated compliance the inspection frequency is reduced to the normal level.
- At ' normal level ' 1 in 4 shipments is inspected. When 20 shipments have demonstrated compliance then inspection frequency is reduced to the reduced level.
- At ' reduced level ' 1 in 20 shipments is inspected. This is the lowest level of inspection of ' risk' foods.
- If there are any failures at the ' normal' or ' reduced levels' , the product returns to the ' tightened' level and every shipment is inspected.
- Shipments of ' risk food' are not released until results are known and compliance is assured.
Active surveillance category
- 10% of shipments (1 in 10) are referred to AQIS for inspection.
- Results are analysed by ANZFA to determine if the food should be categorised as ' risk' or returned to the ' random' surveillance level.
- These products are released on sampling.
Random surveillance category
- 5% of shipments (1 in 20) are referred to AQIS for inspection.
- These products are released on sampling.
In the pipeline...
Future surveys are planned for a number of food additives.
Sulphites and nitrites
Information is currently being collated about the use of sulphites in Australian foods. Sulphites are commonly used as a preservative, being added to foods during manufacture. However, as sulphite levels naturally reduce with time and can reduce with cooking, accurate data is not available to determine how much sulphite is actually eaten by consumers. New Zealand and the States and Territories routinely monitor foods for sulphite levels. This survey will collate existing data so that representative concentrations of sulphites can be used for dietary modelling.
A similar study will be conducted for nitrites later in the year.
Intense sweeteners
It will be a sweet summer in 2001-2002 as ANZFA' s survey of intense sweeteners is planned to commence at this time. The survey will be a follow up to that published in 1995 by the National Food Authority (before the formation of ANZFA). Australia and New Zealand will both participate in this ' oh-so-sweet' survey.
Introducing - Senior Food Officers
You may ask how the Monitoring and Evaluation team at ANZFA keeps in touch with State and Territory and New Zealand food issues. One of the ways is through the regular meetings of the Senior Food Officers (SFOs) from New Zealand and each Australian State and Territory.
These meetings also include representatives from the AQIS Imported Foods Program and the Commonwealth Departments of Health and Aged Care and Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry-Australia.
SFOs is a forum that helps promote uniform interpretation and enforcement of the Code and provides the jurisdictions and ANZFA with technical advice.
The Committee convenes monthly via a teleconference and has two face-to-face meetings a year. One of the meetings is held outside Canberra and this year Alice Springs hosted the event.
The Senior Food Officers have many years of experience in the application of food law and liaise closely with officers from local governments throughout Australia.
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Published by the Australia New Zealand Food Authority. Food Surveillance Australia New Zealand can be found on the Internet at www.anfza.gov.au
Food Surveillance welcomes your enquiries and suggestions. Please contact Tony Johnson, Monitoring and Evaluation Telephone: +61 2 6271 2222
Fax: +61 2 6271 2278
Email: tony.johnson@anzfa.gov.au
FoodSurveillance Australia New Zealand articles do not necessarily reflect the views of ANZFA, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, AQIS or State and Territory Health Departments, or indicate any commitment of these bodies to a particular course of action.
ISSN 1445-8713
©Australia New Zealand Food Authority 2001
You may reproduce articles from Food Surveillance Australia New Zealand in unaltered form for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation, with an appropriate acknowledgment. Apart from any other use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights are reserved. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to Information Officer, ANZFA, PO Box 7186, Canberra BC ACT 2610, Australia.
Quiz answers: 1a, 2b, 3c, 4c, 5b, 6c, 7b |