EU: Contamination threat hits soft drinks

The European Commission's food and drink consumer alert service has warned of a spate of contaminations in Italy of various non-alcoholic drinks from packaging print with the potentially toxic isopropyl thioxanthone.

Its 'rapid alert system for food and feed (RASFF)' has reported the leaching of the chemical into; a banana and strawberry soya drink, standard orange juice, and 'red' orange juice that were made in Germany; plus orange juice, general 'fruit' juice and chocolate milk made in Austria.

The alerts follow last year's seizure of 30m litres of Nestlé liquid baby milk found tainted with the printing ink chemical.

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