On Friday 20th September 2024, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) published urgent allergy advice relating to mustard ingredients and peanut contamination.

Since the FSA released its initial statement, over 64 product recalls have been carried out by UK businesses, with food items such as salads, sauces, dips, and pre-packed sandwiches impacted.

The FSA is now working with local authorities and the food production industry as a whole to identify any further instances of contamination.

Although the agency has issued warnings directly to consumers suffering with peanut allergies and will continue to provide updates, the FSA has also highlighted the need for businesses operating within the food production industry to take appropriate action.

In the following article, we will provide an overview of the FSA guidance for food factories. We will also explore five solutions that could help your site to deal with this current issue and safeguard against any future instances of supply chain contamination.

What is the FSA Guidance for Food Production Sites?

In response to this incident, the Food Standards Agency has called for businesses to:

  • Carry out the necessary allergen checks to ensure their products and ingredients are not contaminated.
  • Verify with suppliers if any products or ingredients could be affected.
  • Ensure all food packaging is compliant – mustard is an allergen itself, so if it is present in a product it will already be labelled in bold on the packaging. If there is a risk it could be in the product, there will be a ‘may contain’ label on the packaging.

How should your site approach this incident and prepare for the future?

If your site handles any products that contain or may contain mustard, mustard seeds, mustard powder or mustard flour, it is essential that you follow the FSA guidance listed above.

Even if your site has not been impacted by the issue of mustard ingredients and peanut contamination, it is still important to learn from this incident and to have a plan in place should anything similar happen in the future.

1. Choose your suppliers carefully

With the FSA encouraging factories to check in with their suppliers, this is an opportunity to assess the transparency and reliability of the companies you work with.

Whether its their approach to segregation or their method of transporting goods to your site, it’s important that you have total confidence in their attitude towards allergen control.

In addition to this, it is vital that your on-site team is confident in refusing a delivery if there are any signs of cross contamination or a compromised product. You can reinforce this point with training and visual standards.

2. Assess your approach to Allergen Testing

FSA guidance also asks that factories carry out relevant allergen checks, so it’s important that you have the right testing kits on site.

One option to explore is our range of Rapid EASY Allergen Test Kits. They are available for same day despatch and provide results within 10 minutes, so are ideal for time-pressured situations. The kits also have a shelf life of approx. 6-12 months and don’t need to be refrigerated, ensuring they are equally suitable for sites that wish to plan ahead.

Discover our Rapid Allergen Test Kits

3. Inform and empower your site staff

It’s important that this incident doesn’t just stay at top level, only discussed by leadership teams. Instead, you should view this as an opportunity to inform and empower all of the operatives working at your site.

Through ongoing training, you can teach your workforce about the risks of supply chain contamination, the FSA guidance surrounding this topic, your site’s specific approach to dealing with any incidents, and the subject of allergen control as a whole. As a result, your team will have a greater understanding of why allergen checks are so essential.

4. Explore the benefits of Digitalisation

You should also consider the benefits of introducing a Cloud-Based Quality Management system to your site. Not only will this save time by reducing the frequency/need for some manual tasks, but it will also make it so any checks are easy to monitor and review.

What’s more, if there is a supply chain incident similar to that of the mustard ingredients and peanut contamination, you can access relevant data in a matter of moments. It will also be easy to share the evidence of your care and compliance with investigating bodies and the customers you supply.

5. Defend against on-site contamination

The final step is to evaluate your on-site strategy for the prevention of allergen contamination. After all, contamination can happen at any point of the production process.

From the effective segregation of your equipment to the installation of dedicated allergen spill kits, there are a wide range of solutions to explore.

You could even perform an internal audit to assess your site’s approach to allergen management, as this will give you the chance to identify any vulnerabilities before an external inspection takes place or an incident occurs.

Explore our range of Allergen Spill Kits

To ensure we are always prepared with the right products and services to help our customers, we closely monitor incidents and updates within the food production industry.

If you have any questions surrounding mustard ingredients and peanut contamination, or you would like further guidance on preparing for the possibility of future instances of supply chain contamination, the Klipspringer team is available to provide support.

You can contact us directly on 01473461800 or sales@klipspringer.com. Alternatively, you can fill out the contact form below and one of our friendly team members will be in touch.

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