When it comes to acrylamide, foodwatch complains that consumers remain without information

Foodwatch chips test - discounters better than brands - Belgian biochips extremely stressed

For the fourth time, the consumer organization foodwatch has determined the acrylamide contamination of potato chips in a series of tests. With this, foodwatch is examining whether the federal government's "dynamic minimization concept" is actually influencing the industry to greatly reduce the substance in food that is suspected of being carcinogenic. "There are still products with higher levels of contamination on the supermarket shelves. The federal government's strategy for minimization has failed," explains Matthias Wolfschmidt about the test results. When it comes to consumer information, foodwatch gave the manufacturers bad marks: foodwatch criticized that none of the tested manufacturers gave precise information about acrylamide exposure by telephone or on the Internet.

In the foodwatch chips test, the loads on different products differ by up to 40 times. No-name chips from discounters tended to fare better than brand-name products. The result for the Belgian biochip manufacturer "Tra'fo" is particularly inglorious, as its products were most heavily contaminated. foodwatch reports that no exposure values ​​can be found by telephone or on the Internet from the manufacturers and with discount products it is difficult to find out a manufacturer's telephone number at all. In order to give consumers a choice and to put market pressure on producers, foodwatch demands product-related labeling. For this purpose, foodwatch proposes a comparison scale, the principle of which consumers are already familiar with from the household appliance sector.

Dass das Minimierungskonzept von Regierung und Herstellern nicht funktioniert, zeigt sich für foodwatch beim amtlichen "Signalwert". Für Chips liegt dieser seit Herbst 2002 unverändert bei 1.000 Mikrogramm je Kilogramm und damit zehnfach höher als das beste Produkt im Test. Nur wenn deutsche Hersteller den Signalwert überschreiten, werden sie von der Bundesregierung zur Minimierung des Problemstoffs aufgefordert. Der Signalwert orientiert sich an den zehn Prozent der am höchsten belasteten Produkte und darf nicht mit einem Grenzwert für Unbedenklichkeit verwechselt werden, denn für krebsverdächtige Substanzen gibt es keinen solchen Grenzwert.

Die Testwerte, der Kennzeichnungsvorschlag und die Erfahrungen bei Verbraucheranfragen sind unter www.foodwatch.de a DAK Bungalow.

Source: Berlin [foodwatch]