Food Standards Agency
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Tree of Life dried apricots contain sulphur dioxide
Tree of Life Dried Apricots contain the allergen sulphur dioxide, which is not mentioned on the product label. This makes this product a possible risk to anyone who is sensitive to sulphites. The Agency has issued an Allergy Alert.
Anyone who is sensitive to sulphites is advised not to eat this product. Some people with asthma are sensitive to sulphites and relatively small amounts may trigger an asthma attack.
More information about sulphites and how they are used in food can be found further down this page.
Product details
The affected product is:
- Tree of Life Dried Apricots
- Pack sizes: 1kg, 12.5kg, 125kg, 250kg, 500kg
- All 'best before' dates are affected
The company has contacted retailers that sell the product, and advised them of the need to remove the product from sale until it is over-labelled with the correct allergy information. The company has notified the relevant allergy support organisations, which will contact their members.
No other Tree of Life products are known to be affected.
The science behind the story
Sulphites are used as preservatives in a wide range of foods, in particular soft drinks, sausages, burgers, and dried fruit and vegetables. These additives maintain food colour and prolong shelf-life by preventing the growth of micro-organisms.
When the gas sulphur dioxide is dissolved in a liquid, such as wine, it is known as a sulphite.
Sulphur dioxide is produced naturally when wine and beer are made and it is often added to wine to stop it from continuing to ferment in the bottle. Usually, most of the ‘head space’ in a bottle of wine (the part of the bottle not filled with wine) is sulphur dioxide.
Some people who have asthma may react to inhaling sulphur dioxide. A very few people with asthma have had an attack after drinking acidic drinks (such as fruit-based drinks) containing sulphites, but this is not thought to be very common. Read more about intolerance to sulphites and other additives at eatwell.gov.uk/healthissues/foodintolerance/foodintolerancetypes/foodadditiv/.
Allergy alerts
Sometimes there will be a problem with a food product that means it should not be sold. Then it might be 'withdrawn' (taken off the shelves) or 'recalled' (when customers are asked to return the product). Sometimes foods have to be withdrawn or recalled if there is a risk to consumers because the allergy labelling is missing or incorrect or if there is any other food allergy risk.
In such situations the Agency will issue an Allergy Alert. It is also possible to subscribe to an email alert system to receive automatic messages whenever Allergy Alerts are issued. Click on 'Get alerts' in the box at the bottom of this page to find more details.
You can get details of all the latest allergy alerts as soon as they're issued by getting the details sent as a SMS text message direct to your mobile phone.
To sign up to this free service, simply send the text message ‘START ALLERGY’ to the number 62372. To unsubscribe, just text 'STOP ALLERGY' to the same number.
You can also subscribe to our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for food and allergy alerts. RSS is a format for distributing news content and is a simple way to keep up to date with the latest news on a website. When we publish via RSS, you can automatically get the updated content via a 'news aggregator' or 'news reader'. Our RSS feed will contain a brief summary and link back to our web content. Click on ‘What is RSS’ on the left of this page for more details.
