Allergy alerts accounted for more than half the product recall notices issued by the Food Standards Agency between July and September this year.

The FSA has published a summary of food incidents it handled over the three-month period, during which it issued 54 food notices. Thirty of these related to allergy alerts, with the top three undeclared allergens being egg, nuts and mustard.

The FSA also led, and in some cases supported, 11 incidents linked to possible risks of food poisoning and 10 to do with physical contamination.

The information described the overall details of the incident, the level of risk to consumers and what action the FSA, the industry and local authorities took.

Among the notices were:

  • Booths Creamy Lancashire Cheese sandwich (allergy alert)
  • Asda Egg Salad sandwich (contained milk which was not mentioned on the label)
  • Waitrose Orange & Milk Chocolate cookies (hazelnut allergy)
  • Linwoods Multigrain loaf (soya allergy)
  • Morrisons Busy Bee cake (possible presence of salmonella)
  • Clayton Park Bakery’s sausage rolls (may contain pieces of plastic)

“We hope this data is useful for people who want to know more about the incidents we have been handling recently," said Richard Hoskin, head of the FSA incidents and resilience unit. "It’s a retrospective look covering food incidents from July to September 2016. These aren’t live incidents, but the list provides all of the important aspects of them in one place.”

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