Awareness of Food Safety Hazards in ASEAN Foods

Apr 13, 2015

Established on 8 August 1967, in Bangkok, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, has ten Member States – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Viet Nam, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Cambodia. One of the aims and purposes of ASEAN is to accelerate the economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region.

The food industry is one ASEAN business sector with the potential to support economic growth. Within this industry, food safety is key to its success. Controlling food safety hazards is an important role of food manufacturers. They are responsible for ensuring the safety of their products in food supply chain. This can be achieved by implementation of relevant food safety regulations, industrial guidelines, codes of practice and food safety standards. Food manufacturers normally apply the Codex Alimentarius HACCP principles as part of their food safety management system. It also forms part of the legal requirements for some countries as well as by many food safety standards, such as BRC, IFS, FSSC, amongst others.

As referred to in Codex Alimentarius HACCP Principle 1, the HACCP team should list all of the hazards that may be reasonably expected to occur at each step according to the scope, from primary production, processing, manufacture, and distribution, until the point of consumption. The HACCP team should next conduct a hazard analysis to identify, for the HACCP plan, which hazards are of such a nature that their elimination or reduction to acceptable levels is essential to the production of a safe food. Relevant information needed to conduct the hazard analysis should be comprehensive and cover the latest scientific literature, historical and known hazards associated with specific food products, relevant codes of practice, recognised guidelines, relevant food safety legislation and customer requirements, etc.

In the past year, food safety issues have been alerted or notified in the EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed portal for some countries in ASEAN. Examples of the issues are presented in Table 1. Food manufacturers should consider these when conducting hazard analyses.

Product group	Product	Hazard
Fish and fish product	Canned fish products	Histamine, Mercury
	Frozen fish products	Histamine, Mercury, Cadmium Poor temperature control Antibiotics
	Crab stick	Undeclared egg
Crustacean and products thereof	Frozen cooked prawns	Salmonella. Vibrio cholerae Antibiotics
Crustacean and products thereof	Dried shrimp	Cadmium
Cephalopod and products thereof	Frozen cuttlefish	Cadmium
Bivalve molluscs and products thereof	Frozen cooked clama	Noro virus, Salmonella
Fruits and vegetable	Fresh papaya, aubergines, chilli, dragon fruit, coriander leaves, parsley, celery, long bean, eggplant, luffa, okra	Pesticide residue
	Dried banana, mango, pineapple	Too high content of sulphite Too high content of colourant Unauthorised use of colourant
	Slice galangal in brine, pickled lime, water chestnut in brine	Too high content of sulphite Undeclared sulphite Unauthorised use of colourant
	Paan leaves, morning glory, water spinach	Salmonella
	Ready to eat jackfruit, green mint, sweet basil	Too high count of E.coli
	Papaya	Unauthorised GMO
Herb and spices	Nutmeg Cinnamon Cracker nuts Acacia	Aflatoxin High count of E.coli
Nuts, nut products and seed	Desiccated coconut	Rodent excrement Undeclared sulphite
Nuts, nut products and seed	Canned coconut milk	Undeclared sulphite
Cereals and bakery products	Noodles	Unauthorised use of colourant
	Rice noodle stick, flour mix	Aluminium
	Died egg noodle	Undeclared gluten
Soups, broths, sauces and condiments	Soy sauce	3-MCPD
Soups, broths, sauces and condiments	Sauce	Too high content of sulphite Undeclared sulphite
Prepared dish and snack	Crisps Ready meal	Undeclared milk, soy, peanut
Poultry meat and poultry meat products	Frozen chicken	Salmonella

Source: RASFF Portal during 1 Jan 2014 – 31 Dec 2014.

For food manufacturers in ASEAN, with the same goal of achieving economic growth in the region, implementation and maintenance of effective food safety management system is the key.

Written by:

Ms. Boontarika Bampenpol
Systems & Services Certification
Assistant Food Product Manager

Reference:

Recommended international code of practice general principles of food hygiene (CAC/RCP 1-1969, Rev. 4-2003)
EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed Portal (RASFF)