Drowning in Alerts, Starved of Direction

‍It was over 20 years ago, in 2005, that the Sudan 1 recall of over 350 food products occurred in the UK. I was working in a factory that was unaffected by the issue but had set-up a massive rework process to strip multipacks, removing affected products and sending good product back for repacking. A few years later I found myself working with the Seasoning suppliers trying to create a “spice passport” to prevent this issue happening again. What I did learn was that everyone was testing the same raw materials for the same illegal dyes which by that time had multiplied from Sudan 1 to include things like Para Red, etc. There were no winners in this as each company worked to protect their supply network and reputation.

‍‍I sat in a presentation to a customer about horizon scanning in August 2026 and 20 years on there was the same line on illegal dyes. Which made me reflect on the issue 20 years prior and that in this time bad actors are still contaminating spices with illegal dyes. In many countries this will be tested, illegal dyes detected and the spices rejected. But what about countries that don’t have this testing regime? Does their population unknowingly consume illegal dyes? Are manufacturers really running a true horizon scanning risk assessment and protecting their business and consumers?

Well, here’s a number to sit with: 3,689.

‍That’s how many serious or potentially serious RASFF notifications sat in one export I analysed this month, covering foods flowing into Europe since 2020. Aflatoxin in Turkish figs. Salmonella in Polish chicken. Pesticides in Indian rice. Week after week, year after year, with a regularity you could set your watch by.

Now add the rest of the stack.

‍-          A fortnightly food law digest that routinely tops 50 pages

-          A monthly FSA Incident Prevention Update

-          Monthly EU food fraud reports

-          Quarterly commodity watchlists

-          AI-assisted horizon scans

The FSA alone processed around 12,700 signals last year.

So ask yourself the honest question: with all of that landing in your inbox, do you actually know what to do differently on Monday morning? Can you separate US issues from UK and European issues? For most food businesses, the answer is no. And that’s not a failing of your technical team. It’s a failing of the system.

A lot of noise. Very little signal.

‍I spent time this month pulling these sources apart — the RASFF data, the FSA updates, the fraud networks, the watchlists — and three uncomfortable truths fell out.

First, the alert systems measure what gets tested, not what’s risky. RASFF is dominated by aflatoxin and pesticides in dried fruit, nuts and spices — because that’s what border labs are instructed to look for. Rank your raw material risks by counting alerts and you’ll over-control figs and under-control everything the border never sees.

Second, fraud is almost invisible in the safety data. Barely 0.1% of those 3,689 notifications carry a fraud tag. Yet the EU’s own fraud network logs around 200 suspicions every single month — olive oil cut with cheaper oils, water pumped into chicken, honey that outsells what is actually produced. And in the FSA’s latest retail survey, half the goat meat tested was actually sheep. Nobody’s alert system caught that. Somebody’s testing programme did.

Third, the UK is working with a partial picture. Since Brexit, we see full detail only of alerts flagged as impacting the UK — 51 in May and June, against thousands moving through the network. Add a border regime that MPs and the National Audit Office have repeatedly found incomplete, and the room has got darker at precisely the moment the risks — geopolitical, climatic, criminal — are getting worse.

Every one of these feeds is an input. Not one of them is a decision. The burden of turning noise into action lands, every time, on you.

Direction beats data. Every time.

This is the same argument I made in Quality is the new battleground for retailers: systems that exist to pass an audit protect nobody. Quality isn’t delivered in a head office presentation — and horizon scanning isn’t delivered in a subscription folder. The value only appears when intelligence changes a specification, a testing plan, or a supplier decision.

So here’s what I’d ask of every UK food business sourcing ingredients globally. Five steps, none of which need new software. All of them deliver compliance to BRCGS and retailer audit clauses and make your business more secure.

1.     Train the people who ‘buy’, not just the people who ‘test’. Fraud walks in through the commercial door — a price too good to be true, a new supplier in a hurry. Your buyers are your first detection system. Equip them so they can act as a first line of defence.

2.     Stop relying on the UK-flagged alerts. Watch the full RASFF Window for your categories, join a shared-intelligence network like FIIN or the Food Authenticity Network, and give one named person the time to own it. And I mean, truly own it. In my retail career we would publish an horizon scanning summary each month with defined action points with named owners across the business.

3.     Run one monthly risk review with teeth. Map every ingredient to its origin and the current intelligence. Every item ends one of three ways: no action (recorded), watch (with a trigger), or change. An hour a month. Direction, documented. Software like Foods Connected and Quor Systems are making this task easier to manage.

4.     Test what the paperwork tells you. Certificates and CoAs are being forged — the National Food Crime Unit has said so plainly. Put a risk-based authenticity and contaminant testing plan behind your highest-exposure materials: nuts and dried fruit from stressed origins, spices, olive oil, honey, meat species and content.

5.     Stress-test your top ten ingredients against geopolitics, climate and animal disease. Find your single-origin dependencies and pre-approve alternates before the crisis, not during it. If it goes wrong anyway, the six steps in our crisis management guide are where to start.

And if a low price is the thing tempting you to skip steps — go back and read Defining product quality. Cheap that isn’t what it claims to be isn’t cheap. It’s a liability with a label on it.

Horizon scanning or finger crossed?

Is your horizon scanning strong enough to protect your customers or only strong enough to fill a folder before an audit?

‍‍If you’re not sure, that’s the conversation to have now, while it’s still a planning question and not, as we set out in Crisis management in the food industry, a 2am phone call. Ukwazi builds exactly this: practical horizon-scan-to-action processes, vulnerability assessments and supplier verification programmes that stand up to BRCGS, to your retail customers, and to the real world.

‍‍Get in touch: david.roos@ukwazi.co.uk — or message me on LinkedIn. The noise isn’t going to organise itself.