Recalls news: from cars to food

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An amazingly large number of things, including food items, medical equipment, electrical items and vehicles - mainly from reputable suppliers - are subject to safety recalls.

There are lots of different sources of information, with the main one in Europe being 'RAPEX', which is quite difficult to use, and other official sources subject to change through policy.

Whilst it is unlikey anyone will regularly scour the Internet for the latest recall news - particularly as searchnig for specific items can be very time consuming - this page presents links and tools that, if you have doubts about or want to check up on something, can make your task easier.

However, 'Register My Appliance' from the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances, offer a free registration facility, likely to be relevant to at least some of what you own, which can then automatically alert you if necessary.

Read on to get a feel for what is out there. At the very least, check out sthe sections on FOOD and VEHICLES below, as you might find them both useful and then use the foor ratings site frequently.

CARS - SEE 'VEHICLES' BELOW

ELECTRICAL ITEMS 

Electrical Safety Council

Beyond the 'widget', which seems to repeat many of the same warnings as The Chartered Trading Standards Institute below, the Safety Council offers lots of useful advice on numerous subjects, includng for landlords and on how to find a competent electrician, from its homepage here.

FOOD

The Food Standards Agency food alerts page, along with a search tool is here. As can be seen in the Food Withdrawals and Recalls feed in the right column, there seems to be an average of around five new food withdrawals each month and the FSA's on-page tool also lets you search back in time.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, is regular use of the FSA's food hygeing ratings page, here, where you can search by name or area for the hygeine rating of any establishment selling food. You might find yourself changig your favourite restaurant, take-away or grocer.

RAPEX

The European Commission's  'Rapid Alert System for dangerous non-food products' is described on its home page here, which also offers a useful video guide, as

The Rapid Alert System enables quick exchange of information between 31 European countries and the European Commission about dangerous non-food products posing a risk to health and safety of consumers.

This is a complex and time consuming service to check , but, if for example you suspect an issue with a specific product - the key to using this effectively is checking up on specific products - you could use this service. beyond the hume page, the main search form is presented here.

UK PRODUCT RECALLS

The Chartered Standard Trading Institute presents here, a listing of around 50 latest product recalls. These may be reported directly to it or drawn from the RAPEX data above.

VEHICLES

If you own, or are considering purchasing a vehicle, it is worth periodically checking the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, recalls page, which presents an easy to use look up form, and lists hundreds of recalls across all manner of vehicle, dating back to 1992. It can be found here 

CONTACTING TRADING STANDARDS

You may be in a situation where you feel a product should be recalled but noting is being done. You might then want to contact Trading Standards or the Citizens Advice Bureau via this link here.

More?

This post will for ever be 'in development' as links are liable to become out of date and new material becomes avaialble. If you have any useful suggestions, we would be grateful to learn from you.