Banned Sudan Red dye back on SA shelves

A banned cancer-causing dye, used illegally to enhance the colour of food, has once again been found in products on South African supermarket shelves.

More than 30 000 Tastic Simply Delicious cook-in-sauces and ready-to-eat rice products have been fingered in laboratory tests as containing the industrial chemical Sudan Red, along with another banned colourant, Methyl Yellow.

The batch, manufactured in India in June and July and sold from August this year, were pulled from supermarkets nationwide on Thursday. An additional precautionary recall of another 200 000 units in the same range — all the available stock in SA — is also underway.

Known as Sudan 1, 2, 3 and 4, the azo dyes are classified as carcinogens — cancer-causing agents — by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.  Sudan dyes are legally used in industry to colour petrol, waxes, floor and shoe polish and cosmetics.

Tiger Brands, which owns the Tastic brand, said this morning that an “error of judgement” internally had led to some of the products being released before results from local laboratory testing were in.

“Protocol wasn’t followed,” said managing executive for the group’s rice and pasta business, Naresh Singh, “and some of the product was sent out”.

The Simply Delicious range was produced by a “reputable company” in India, he said. Tiger Brands would be investigating why the contamination wasn’t picked up there.

Singh said the company’s decision to introduce additional local testing had followed the Sunday Times’expose of Sudan Red in food in 2005, which sparked the country’s biggest food recall. Tiger Brands was not implicated in the scandal.

The newspaper’s initial five-week investigation exposed the illegal presence of the chemical in 13 products, mainly chilli powders and spices. Two years later, when the same products were re-tested, the dye was again found in six of them (read Sunday Time'sexpose).

The health risks of Sudan Red in food are well documented, with the dyes having been flagged by the World Health Organisation as potentially toxic, cancer-causing colorants that may damage a person’s DNA. They are irritants and tests on rats have resulted in cancer.

Although the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom has indicated the health risk from consuming food contaminated with the industrial dye is small, their use in food remains illegal.

Consumers who have bought the affected batches can return them to any major retailer and receive a coupon to the same value to buy another product of their choice. For more information, consumers can call 0860 121 344.