Coumarin

On 15 July 2008 the European Parliament passed the decree of aromas and certain food ingredients with aromatic characteristics. As far as coumarin is concerned the Federal Government unfortunately asserted itself and thus prevents that the maximum values for coumarin are drop-ped if it is contained originally in spices and used in end products. Nevertheless there are reliefs which have already been written down by the supervision authorities, although the decree hasn't been realized in the German law yet.

So the following maximum values result of enclosure III part B of the decree of aromas:

50 mg/kg
for traditional and/or seasonal bakery pro-ducts where cinnamon is mentioned in the marking (e. g. gingerbread with cinnamon)

20 mg/kg
for breakfast cereal products including muesli

15 mg/kg
for fine bakery products except of tradi-tional and/or seasonal bakery products where cinnamon is mentioned in the marking.

5 mg/kg
for desserts

This maximum values don't apply to cinnamon or mixed spices. They don't apply neither if the end product was manufactured in gastronomy.

HACCP concept

As reported in our last issue we had our working HACCP concept being worked over scientifically in the context of a dis-sertation. The dissertation was assessed with a mark of 1,3 (means excellent!) from the „University of Weihenstephan“. We congratulate our colleague to this ex-cellent piece of work. In the meantime all suggestions for improving our HACCP concept have been included. For you this means a maximum of safety.

Pesticides

Again and again there are official discus-sions about residues of pesticides in herbs and spices. Of course our strongly organized controls of incoming goods test our products for residues.

Development of prices

The spice industry is subject to an enor-mous cost pressure. Not only the costs of energy and freights are rising but also the prices of raw materials and packagings. The constant increasing demand in China and India contributes to the rise in prices. That's why the situation gets worse and worse.

Last but not least

We are optimizing our recalling and emer-gency system for which a regular checking of data is indispensable. Therefore we ask you to fill in the data sheet which you will receive and send it back to us so that we can react as quickly and efficiently as possible if necessary.