SUDAN 1 FOOD DYE

[Stanley]

SUDAN 1 FOOD DYE

19 February 2005

I’ve always held that one is allowed to be wise before the event, I’m also aware that any public pronouncement which massages one’s own perceptions can be dangerous. However, the news that broke yesterday and has been fleshed out today that many processed food products contain Sudan 1, an Azo dye first discovered in 1918 and known to be a carcinogen has done nothing to reduce my antipathy to any product of food technology geared to maximum sales and profit. My attitude is governed by the knowledge that by the very nature of these products, prices are driven down and profit levels up most effectively by sourcing the cheapest ingredients.
This is worrying enough but reading between the lines of today’s news stories some disturbing facts come to light. The dye, originally intended for use in non-edible products such as boot polish is simply a red colour enhancer. It is a manufactured product and has an almost indefinite shelf life, it is also very difficult to detect. 85 years after the substance was banned in America as a food dye, tests for the substance were introduced in July 2003 and warnings issued about the presence of the dye in some raw ingredients. On February 7th this year an Italian laboratory discovered Sudan 1 in a sample of Worcestershire Sauce manufactured by a major British food processor.
It seems that the chilli powder which contained the banned substance had been imported before July 2003 and had sat in stock since then. In addition, the Worcestershire Sauce itself has a long shelf life and this explains why it found its way into the processed foods that have been recalled.
My question is this, given the fact that the need to test for the dye was known since July 2003 at the latest, why did it not occur to the manufacturers to test existing stocks of chilli powder for the banned substance? Was this oversight, some might say culpable oversight? Or was it a product of a cost-conscious management driven by the need to keep costs down?
I have long held the view that the producers of processed food products are not benevolent associations. Their selection of ingredients is not governed by quality but by profit. There are many more ingredients which science tells us are best avoided, hydrogenated oils are perhaps the major problem looming over them. Some companies are already addressing this problem but the majority will not modify their foods until there is a legal reason to do so. This doesn’t look like customer care to me.
One good thing that surfaced from these revelations is the fact that my favourite, Lea and Perrin’s Worcestershire Sauce, is above suspicion. Gott sei dank!

19 February 2005