Food Standards Agency
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Changes to FSA food alert system
The Food Standards Agency is changing the way it issues information to consumers about food product withdrawals and recalls. The new system takes effect from June 2010.
Under the new system, a 'Product Withdrawal Information Notice' or a 'Product Recall Information Notice' will be issued to let consumers and local authorities know about problems associated with food. These replace what was known under the previous system as the ‘Food Alert for Information’.
The ‘Food Alert for Action’ category of alert will continue to be issued and will remain unchanged. This alert is issued to provide local authorities with details of specific action to be taken on behalf of consumers.
Details about the latest product withdrawals and recalls, as well as an archive of previous alerts, can be found via the link below.
Why has the system changed?
In 2009, the FSA carried out a 12-week consultation to review the way it communicates with local authorities during incidents. The change will:
- increase FSA speed of response during incidents – this is because information notices will be quicker for the FSA to produce and issue
- increase the impact of ‘for action’ alerts issued to local authorities – some local authorities indicated that they were receiving too many alerts (mainly of the type where no action needed to be taken)
- address concerns voiced by some parts of the food industry over the terminology the FSA previously used, particularly when all the required actions by food business operators have been carried out following an incident
The change to the system does not extend to the Allergy Alert – this type of alert will continue to be issued in the same way.
About product withdrawals and recalls
If there is a problem with a food product that means it should not be sold, then it might be 'withdrawn' (taken off the shelves) or 'recalled' (when customers are asked to return the product).
How to get the latest information about withdrawals and recalls
You can get details of the latest product withdrawals and recalls, including Food Alerts for Action, either by email or SMS text to you mobile phone. Visit the Get Alerts page at the link towards the bottom of this page to find out how.
You can also subscribe to our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for food and allergy alerts. RSS is a format for distributing news content and is a simple way to keep up to date with the latest news on a website.
When we publish via RSS, you can automatically get the updated content via a 'news aggregator' or 'news reader'. Our RSS feed will contain a brief summary and link back to our web content. Click on 'What is RSS' on the left of this page for more details. To subscribe, copy and paste the URL below into your 'news reader':
