ITO Thailand Hygiene Blog
4 impacts if your food products have no food safety (Part 2)
3.Legal actions
According to the Food Act B.E. 2522 of Thailand, it states that if food (including food containers) is contaminated, impure, adulterated, does not meet standards, not hygienic or likely to be harmful to the health of the public, that food manufacturer may be subject to suspension or revocation of the license to produce the food.
Furthermore, some cases may be subject to fines or imprisonment; for example, if the product does not meet the criteria prescribed in the Government Gazette, such as in case the mixture or food additives do not pass the inspection and analysis, the manufacturer may be fined not exceeding twenty thousand baht (Section 47), in case the food container does not meet the requirements, the manufacturer shall be subject to imprisonment for not exceeding two years or fines of not exceeding twenty thousand baht or both (Section 48), etc., as summarized in the below table of which detailed information can be read more here:
Table 1 Summary of the Penalty Provisions under the Food Act B.E. 2522 [1]
4.Product recall/ withdrawal
In addition to the legal action, the unsafe food has to be recalled or withdrawn from the market to prevent harm to consumers. The difference between food recall and food withdrawal is food recall is to immediately remove food that is at health risk from selling. In this regard, the manufacturer/importer must be responsible for recall and notifying the relevant authorities whereas food withdrawal is to remove the food products that have not yet been harmful to health but they may be at risk due to being non-standard products, having unusual labels or being pending for additional health risk investigation [2].
When there is a problem of food safety, food manufacturers in the same or similar group should further consider their production processes and their own risks whether they are at the same risk as that of the problem occurred or not and how to set the contamination prevention measures in order to prevent the problem and to raise the standards of food safety of the organization to be regularly updated.
As for product recall news, the Bureau of Food Safety Extension and Support has made a public relation about the recalls of various unsafe food products of which news can be followed from here.
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