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Listen to this siteFriday 17 October 2008
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The Food Standards Agency has today issued a food alert about novelty food products from China, including chocolate-flavoured 'willy spread', containing melamine.
Melamine is an industrial chemical that should not be present in food. Milk products containing melamine have been at the centre of a major food incident in China.
An Agency spokesperson said: 'This is a first. We’ve never had to put out an alert before on "willy spread" – chocolate-flavoured or otherwise. But on a serious note, if anybody has used any of the affected products they shouldn’t worry, the risk from the melamine in these products is low and it is very unlikely to be harmful.'
The levels of melamine detected in the affected products were 126mg/kg, 153mg/kg and 259mg/kg respectively. The European Commission has said that products found with more than 2.5mg/kg must be withdrawn from the market and destroyed.
The products were manufactured in Zhongshan, China by Le Bang and imported into the UK by Scobie (Llarn) Ltd. They have been sold to a number of Ann Summers premises in the UK.
Scobie (Llarn) Ltd has removed the affected products from sale.
The products are:
'I love you' pen set containing:
If there is a problem with a food product that means it should not be sold, then it might be 'withdrawn' (taken off the shelves) or 'recalled' (when customers are asked to return the product). Food alerts are the FSA's way of letting local authorities and consumers know about problems associated with food and, in some cases, providing details of specific action to be taken. They are issued under two categories:
You can get FSA alerts either by email or SMS text. Visit the Get Alerts page at the link below to find out how.
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Check out Chief Scientist Andrew Wadge's blog at (External) food.gov.uk/scienceblog .
Download pdf
(pdf 24KB) Melamine update Read about Commission Decision 2008/798/EC in the 15 October update Scobie (Llarn) Ltd withdraws certain varieties of novelty products due to contamination with melamine Read the 17 October food alert (External) Get Adobe Acrobat reader You may need the free Acrobat Reader to view a pdfFind out what our other sites have to offer