Illegal colourant used in McDonald's salad dressing

A salad dressing used by fast food chain McDonald's was contaminated with the illegal carcinogenic food colourant, Sudan Red 1, it has emerged.

McDonald's removed their low-fat Caesar dressing from sale last Thursday, within hours of being alerted to the food scare, however the product was never added to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) list of contaminated foods.

The agency published its first list of products containing traces of the industrial dye, usually used to colour shoe polish, wax and petrol, last Friday. Some 38 foods were on the original list; this had increased last night to almost 70 in what is now the biggest ever food recall in the State, according to the authority.

Sudan Red 1 has been banned for use in food since 2003. However, last week an Italian laboratory carrying out routine tests discovered the dye in a batch of Worcester sauce used in the manufacture of a large number of convenience foods.

A spokeswoman for McDonald's Ireland said the company was instructed by its European distribution centre that the dressing was implicated in the food scare. It withdrew the product from all stores, but did not initiate a public information campaign. The dressing had only been introduced three weeks ago, she said, "thankfully we hadn't been selling it for a long time".

The FSAI said it was aware the contaminated dressing had been on sale and subsequently withdrawn by McDonald's, but it was not going to publish the names of any restaurants that had been affected by the scare.

"What our food alert is doing is to make sure consumers are informed about products they might have in their kitchens - that they should throw them out or bring them back to where they purchased them," FSAI chief executive Dr John O'Brien said.

The suppliers of the catering packs of Worcester sauce were responsible for recalling the product from any restaurant, or institution, including schools, hospitals and nursing homes, they supplied. A number of agencies, including the Health Service Executive and the Environmental Health Service, were responsible for "spot checking" to make sure recalls had taken place.

"The catering side of things is actually the easy one to manage. What we want to make sure is that we finish the job of alerting consumers," Dr O'Brien said.

The FSAI is continuing to add products to the list. Sixteen new products were added yesterday and it is likely that more products will be added throughout the week.

The most recent products to be implicated in the scare include Walkers Worcester sauce crisps, available in a variety 24 pack, further products in the Tesco ready meal range and a number of Schwartz sauces and ready meals.

The illegal dye entered the food chain through a batch of chilli powder imported to Britain from India and used by Premier Foods (UK) in the manufacture of Worcester sauce.

Premier Foods supplied the sauce to a number of branded companies and to the manufacturers of other food products, such as ready-made meals, soups and crisps. The contaminated products may have been in circulation for the last two years.