Food scares prompt parental panic

YESTERDAY'S baby milk scare will do nothing to calm the nerves of a jittery consumer. A hassled parent is probably the most sensitive consumer of all when it comes to worries about product safety.

Companies have a lot to lose when a scare hits their product. A brand, may not survive when a question is raised about its safety. The baby food market is competitive and a high value is placed on building brand loyalty as early as possible. Pregnancy advice kits bare sponsored by baby food manufacturers and mothers are given gift packs of baby foods in maternity hospitals.

Last May, there was widespread alarm when the British Ministry of Agriculture said it had identified high levels of chemicals of a type used to soften plastics in nine leading brands of baby milk. The Consumers' Association of Ireland called on the Government to carry out tests.

The chemicals were found to reduce sperm counts in baby rats. Food experts said there was no cause for concern and marketing people tried to reassure parents that baby milk was safe.

The Nestle corporation has been boycotted for its marketing of dried milk products in the Third World. Babies suffered "bottle baby disease" after aggressive marketing campaigns persuaded mothers to feed babies on formula rather than breast milk.

The marketing of baby milk in the Third World was widely condemned, as water used to make the formula was often contaminated.

Salmonella has been linked to dried baby milk before. The biggest outbreak in Britain was in 1985 when a strain called Ealing was linked to one baby milk product. The manufacturer withdrew it immediately.

The authorities recommended that unpasteurised raw milk and curd, or casein, which frequently contain salmonellae should not be allowed on to the site of milk-drying plants. Some 48 babies were infected, 46 of whom had been fed the baby milk.

Salmonella is a single-cell organism commonly found in all raw foods of animal origin. There are more than 2,000 strains. Most are named after the place where the outbreak occurs. According to an Irish food scientist, Dr Ted Hood, there is a particularly virulent strain called Salmonella Dublin.

The symptoms of salmonellosis are nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, fever and headaches. The symptoms are most severe in the elderly and infants, where infection can spread from the intestine to the blood stream and other body sites. This can be fatal if it is not treated with antibiotics.

Salmonella was at the root of the largest food scares in 1988, when the then British junior health minister, Ms Edwina Currie, warned of the dangers of eating eggs. She resigned in a storm of criticism from producers.

Salmonella is a notifiable disease, and the Department of Health recorded 571 cases in Ireland in 1995, with a provisional figure of 659 for last year. A spokeswoman said there had been no reported cases in Ireland of salmonella anatum, the strain identified in 12 babies in Britain since October.

Distributed in Ireland by the Finglas-based company, Gillespie and Co, Milupa products have around 16 per cent of the baby milk market, according to a company spokeswoman. Yesterday callers to the company helpline were being advised to switch to another Milupa product, called Aptamil. If this was not available, the company said, they should buy Cow & Gate Plus "or some other caesin-based product". Cow & Gate is also manufactured by Milupa's parent company.

The latest scare will also focus politicians' minds on the need to legislate powers to the new Food Safety Board. Set up in November by the Department of Health, primarily in response to the BSE crisis, it has yet to be put on a statutory footing.

Yesterday the board chairman, Dr Daniel O'Hare, said he understood legislation was "at an advanced stage" and should be enacted before the summer.

"To date we would not have had a role. What has happened is that there has been a scare and the appropriate body took action. We are the body that will regulate the regulators, not the body who will do the testing."

Dr O'Hare said the board would be monitoring this scare as it was the first since it was established. The case would be "certainly one of the more formidable or interesting challenges" because it is manufactured outside the State. The product, Milumil, is manufactured in France for the British and Irish market by a Dutch-based multinational.

Milupa was recently acquired by this multinational, Nutricia, which also owns the Cow & Gate brand. In June 1993, Nutricia withdrew all its powdered baby food products in the US because of possible salmonella contamination. In November of the same year, the company withdrew its Olvarit baby food when excessive levels of disinfectant were found.

According to Dr Hood, salmonella thrives at a body temperature of around 36C but is easily killed by higher temperatures. "The danger would be under-processing and making this up without using hot water. Salmonella should not be present but if it is in the product then it is most likely that it has been contaminated after the product has been manufactured."

Dr Hood said breast milk was the best possible food for a baby, but when this was not possible, baby milk formulae were a good alternative. This point is made at the top of the Milumil box, where it recommends that Milumil be used only on medical advice.

"I think it's very important that they should be there and people shouldn't be frightened by an event that is extremely rare," said Dr Hood.