Last week I got the following email from Julia Reid who runs Stonecroft guest house in the Peak District and was the winner of last year’s FreeFrom Eating Out Awards Guest House category.
‘Last week I did my weekly shopping online from Ocado as usual. In the past my gluten-free food has been packaged separately from anything containing gluten. But this week it arrived with a bag of ‘normal’ flour in the same carrier bag as the gluten-free goods. Obviously, I can’t use any of the food as it might be contaminated – so it all went in the bin. I find this a worrying situation for a coeliac. I know you cannot guarantee anything will be kept separately through the food chain, but a dusty bag of flour and the risk of cross contamination is totally unacceptable to a caterer (especially one with Gluten-Free Accredition) or a coeliac.
I messaged Ocado and this was their response:
‘Thank you for taking the time to get in contact with me.
I apologise for the trouble this causes you, regrettably it isn’t part of our practice to separate these items. I’m not sure if we have the facility to make specific packing requests.
However I will contact our Trading department for you to see if there is anything I can arrange for you. I will get back in contact with you the second I hear from them.’
Julia had emailed us to ask whether anything is expected of on-line delivery services to minimise the risks of contamination when they deliver ‘freefrom’ food – and whether they had any training or protocols for staff to follow when handling ‘freefrom’ food. As she said, it seems to make a bit of a mockery of all the effort that she and those like her go to if supermarkets and delivery services don’t bother about contamination at all!
And she has a good point.
Right now I very much doubt that there are any protocols in place for the handling of ‘freefrom’ food on delivery services. It would not be part of any regulations so, if there were to be any protools, they would be voluntary on the part of the company. I suspect that Ocado’s, and indeed any other delivery service’s response would be that their remit was to deliver food, not to deliver ‘freefrom’ food. So they cannot make any claims/guarantees/promises about any of the food the food they delivered.
However, that does not mean that this attitude cannot, and should not, change….
The delivery of an order of freefrom foods packed in a bag with non-freefrom products (such as bags of ‘normal’ flour) does make a nonsense of Julia’s efforts. But it also makes a nonsense of supermarkets’ and other ‘freefrom’ retailers’ efforts to supply their customers with ‘freefrom’ foods. And it should not be that difficult a problem to address.
Just looking at my Ocado delivery, there are already several different bags there – fresh, frozen, store cupboard etc – all with the appropriate goods in them. So how hard would it be to add a gluten-free and a dairy-free bag and to fill them appropriately? Come on supermarkets – complete the job!
Thanks for posting that Michelle. As we have both said, what is the point of us all being careful about cross contamination if we are let down further back in the supply chain.. I will be very interested to see if anyone else feels the same, but as you say, if they can supply frozen food and chilled products in separate bags, then why cant they supply obviously labelled “Free From” foods likewise…It would be virtually impossible to separate other foods out that arent specifically Free From, but I cant see why the Free From products cant be bagged separately…. after all they are on a separate aisle in the shops! I for one can no longer take the risk shopping online when shopping for my business… (As an aside to this comment, when I had my Gluten Free Accreditation Assessment a couple of weeks ago, the assessor agreed with my comments… it made me feel I wasn’t making a fuss about nothing)
I do not bake anything myself and although I carefully avoid gluten I do not usually eat any cake or bread at all, due to issues such as fat content, sugar content and stickiness.
I have had my groceries delivered for many years by a major supermarket.
I pay to have bags as I feel that that is important for hygiene: bags also help a faster, more convenient, unloading from trays to house.
Some years ago in a supermarket (not the one that delivers my groceries to me) I noticed that the FreeFrom section had some gluten-free flour alongside other FreeFrom products.
Good.
There was a small notice mentioning that packets of yeast were available in the bakery aisle.
Hmm!
It would be nice to think that when the packets of yeast went into a supermarket that some went to the FreeFrom section and some went to the bakery aisle and none ever got moved from the bakery aisle to the FreeFrom section. That is, first take the box to the FreeFrom aisle, unload some packets onto the shelf, then take the rest to the bakery aisle, not in the other way round order!
A thought just occurred to me as I am writing this post: Would it help if the manufacturers of the yeast produced packets of FreeFrom yeast in a different colour packet and maybe with different artwork, so that colour were not the only difference, at the same price and stated openly on the pack that the product is the same as in the original packets and that the different colour packets are simply to help with the issue of cross-contamination control over wheat in supermarkets?
For people who are wheat-sensitive and for people who bake bread that is intended to have no gluten-containing ingredients, how big an issue is it if the packets of yeast are only available from nearby to the wheat flour rather than with the FreeFrom flour? Both from the standpoint of the product having been possibly cross-contaminated and from the standpoint of actually needing to walk into the bakery aisle near to the bags of wheat flour?
William Overington
18 February 2016