21 September 2007 - As a precautionary measure, the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority (CAFIA), in cooperation with the General Directorate of Customs (GDC), has announced that it has suspended 4 extra consignments of Indian guar gum.
The blocked products will not be put on the market until their safety has been established.
Laboratory results, which are expected soon, will determine whether the consignments of guar gum are contaminated with pentachlorophenol and dioxins.
The news comes as an EU team of experts prepares to travel to India early next month to inspect sites to assess India Glycols efforts to eliminate the toxins from its product.
“Most of the batches of guar gum from India Glycols have been found to be contaminated with persistent organic pollutants and dioxin, although to different degrees,” EC spokesman Philip Tod confirmed to FLEXNEWS
He added: “Batches of other suppliers have not yet been found contaminated to a significant degree.”
The inspectors from the EC’s Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) will carry out a week-long inspection in India from October 3-10. It is planned they will visit five sites; the India Glycols plant, the laboratory doing the analysis in India, another guar gum producer and a chemical company delivering chemicals to guar gum producers.
Mr Tod said the results of the inspection mission may not be published for three to six months.
Indian authorities have suspended all exports of guar gum from India Glycols while they are awaiting clarification of the source of contamination. The EC said that it was its understanding that no batches of guar gum from India Glycols were currently being traded in the European Union.
“The findings to date relate to consignments which are blocked and for which analytical results became only recently available as laboratories have received a lot of requests for analysis from authorities and industry,” said Mr Tod
“But there is no problem for public health as the consignments remain blocked pending the outcome of analysis.”
As of early September, only three of the EU's 27 member states -- Latvia, Lithuania and Malta -- were unaffected by the contamination, while 16 countries had reported recalls of either guar gum or food products, a Commission official told 'Reuters' last week.
The guar issue made the news in July. FLEXNEWS reported that Swiss company Unipektin AG, which supplies guar gum products to EU markets, recalled batches of food additives containing guar gum.
After the high dioxin levels were detected, national authorities across the EU were warned by Brussels to detain guar gum exports from India Glycols and test consignments for pentachlorophenol and dioxin.