Food Authority: Glass found in Finland not linked with events in Sweden

Findus: Glass in frozen vegetables could have come from cooking bowl

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Finnish officials say that there is no indication that pieces of glass found in food products sold in Finland would be linked in any way to the uproar in Sweden over widespread discoveries of food sabotage involving glass.
     The Finnish Food Safety Authority (EVIRA), the Finnish Grocery Trade Association (PTY) and the Finnish Food and Drink Industries Federation (ETL) have all investigated the matter.
     
Product complaint procedure is nevertheless being modified for now: When a consumer returns foods containing foreign objects to a store, the matter is to be immediately brought to the attention of monitoring authorities, and if glass is suspected, the police are informed. Normally complaints made to stores are passed on to the manufacturer.
     On Monday officials collected information concerning all discoveries of foreign objects in food that had come to their attention since mid-March. The fact that they were found in very different types of products shows that there was no common denominator, says EVIRA director-general Jaana Husu-Kallio.
      Helsingin Sanomat was contacted by a man in Helsinki on Monday, who had found a foreign object three millimetres long in a meat pie that he had bought for lunch. The fast food outlet that sold the pie took the piece and tried to contact the manufacturer. The journalist looked at the piece, but could not say for sure if it was glass or plastic.
     
Small objects found in a bag of frozen vegetables bought in Lapua on Friday were confirmed in a laboratory to be glass. No glass was found in other bags of the same lot of Findus brand frozen vegetables, when they were examined by the food laboratory in Seinäjoki on Monday.
      “The bags were almost back to back. There was only a minute’s gap when they were filled”, says Seppo Kangas, the leading hygienist at the Seinäjoki laboratory. The bags were taken from the same shop that the one where there was glass in it. “This suggests that it was an isolated case”.
      Kai Mäkinen, the managing director of the Finnish operations of Findus, says that the possibility that the glass would have entered the product as a part of the manufacturing process can be ruled out, because no glass is used in the process. He feels that it is also possible that the glass did not get into the food before it reached the home of the consumer.
      “Foods prepared in an oven usually involve the use of a glass or ceramic bowl”, Mäkinen points out.
      Kangas notes that the glass fragments were different from the ones found in Sweden. The ones in Lapua were small and round, only a few millimetres in size, and not large and jagged like the ones found in Sweden.
     
In Kuopio a small piece of glass was examined, which a consumer from Siilinjärvi had found in a package of pepper and cream-marinated chicken filet manufactured by Atria. It had been bought at the Prisma store in Kuopio. Laboratory examination confirmed that it was glass.
     In Lieksa, in North Karelia, police were notified of a five-mm. fragment, which a buyer said had been found in a package of whole wheat bread manufactured by the Swedish company Pågen.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Reports of glass in food products in Finland (6.4.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat