Fishery products produced on unapproved Northern Ireland premises
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Smoked mackerel products have been produced on premises in Northern Ireland not registered with or approved by the district council in that area. The Agency has issued a Food Alert for Action asking district councils to make sure that two smoked mackerel products are withdrawn from sale and destroyed. The products are an unwrapped cold smoked mackerel and a wrapped hot smoked mackerel.
A business must register its premises with the environmental health service at its local authority at least 28 days before opening. In addition, if the business works with certain types of food that might pose a significant risk to consumers, the business must be approved by its local authority. More information about registration and approved premises can be found at the links below.
Despite enquiries by district council officers, it has not been possible to obtain full distribution details or product traceability records for these products. However, distribution is believed to be throughout Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, mainly to businesses that sell Eastern European food products.
Product details
The two products are:
- unwrapped cold smoked mackerel
- hot smoked mackerel in a gold-coloured foil vacuum pack
On the white label of the wrapped hot smoked mackerel pack you will see:
- the wording 'The Smoke House Hot Smoked Mackeral' (where the word 'mackerel' is misspelled) printed on it
- a flag emblem in the colours white, blue and red
- an EU approval number in an oval-shaped circle – the approval number that appears is 'UK 9502 EC'
- the 'use by' date
- the weight in kilograms (kg)
- the price by weight (Euro/kg)
- the price in Euro
The flag emblem and the approval number may not always appear on the individual packs.
Images of these products can be found at the links below. A 'use by' date of 02/03/10 is shown on the packaging in the photograph but a different 'use by' date may be on a label. All date codes are implicated and must be withdrawn from sale and destroyed.
Actions to be taken by district councils in Northern Ireland
As the fishery products were manufactured in unapproved premises they do not comply with the requirements of Regulation EC 853/2004 and the Food Hygiene Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006.
District councils are asked to visit businesses that sell Eastern European food products in their area to make sure that the products are withdrawn from sale and destroyed, if necessary using powers under the Food Safety (Northern Ireland) Order 1991 and Regulation 25 of the Food Hygiene Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006.
If a district council’s officers find these products or other products with ‘The Smoke House’ on the label, they are asked to tell the Food Standards Agency Northern Ireland immediately and provide further details.
Food Standards Agency Northern Ireland
email: incidents.ni@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk.
tel: 028 90417703
fax: 028 90417728
Food alerts
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:
- Food Alerts: for Action
- Food Alerts: for Information
You can get FSA alerts either by email or SMS text. Visit the Get Alerts page at the link below 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.
Share this with: