ABSTRACT
As this chapter was being prepared, in February 2005, more than 400 different food products made by over 300 firms were being recalled by producers from shops and food outlets across the United Kingdom in the largest exercise of this kind in British retail history. The recalls followed the discovery that a batch of one manufacturer’s ‘Worcester’ sauce contained chilli powder contaminated by an industrial dye. The dye in question, Sudan 1, is banned from human consumption because ‘animal tests suggest that it is a potent carcinogen’. According to one toxicologist, ‘In standard tests, in which the dye is fed to rodents for two years, at moderately high levels it caused tumours’ although this scientist was also reported as declaring ‘The risk [to humans] is negligible here’ because high doses or prolonged exposure were so unlikely (Daily Telegraph 22 Feb. 2005). Thus we have an expert scientist stressing the limitations of extrapolating results from animal testing directly to humans.1 This was presumably with a view to minimising public anxiety, given the scale of the sauce’s use across the food-processing industry. And, according to some reports, there was a further twist: the reason that the particular manufacturer’s version of the sauce was favoured by the food-processing industry was that, unlike the brand leader, it contained no animal products and hence could be used in products marketed as suitable for vegetarians (Guardian 22 Feb. 2005; Sunday Times 27 Feb. 2005).
