Below are questions consumers have asked about Tulip’s food safety.
If you have a question relating to Tulip’s food safety, please send us an e-mail.
Ingredients in sausages/barbecue sausages (16 August 2004)
Question: As I suffer from a gluten allergy and have an intolerance to some products, I would like to find out whether there are any Tulip sausages that do not contain gluten, milk products, egg, onions or paprika.
Answer: We have reviewed the composition of all Tulip sausages sold in Denmark and, unfortunately, have to tell you that there are no sausages in our range that do not contain gluten, milk, eggs, onion and paprika. Generally speaking, there is no egg in sausages and we have sausages that do not contain gluten and milk. Onion is more problematic as this is present in most sausages. Paprika is also used frequently and is almost always present in the spice mixtures we use.
The colour in red sausages (16 August, 2004)
Question: What gives the skin on red sausages its red colour?
Answer: Tulip uses various red colourings depending on the colour and colour stability. The labels for red sausages state what colour there is in the various products – these are declared as colourings followed by the E numbers for colouring.
As a rule, Tulip uses the following:
E120 is the group of carmines which are extracted from the pulverised carapace of a (red) scale insect which lives on cactus plants in Central and South America.
The colour is called cochineal and the chemical name is carmine or carminic acid.
E 160b is extracts of a fruit that grows on the Anatto bush. The group of colourings is called Anatto extracts.
E172 is iron oxide, which is oxidised iron (rust).
The colourings are generally used in combination, partly to achieve the right colour, partly to achieve the right colour stability.
More information about E numbers can be found in the “E number book” by Orla Zink and Torben Hallas-Møller.
Starch in sausages from Steff-Houlberg (24 June, 2004)
Question: As my daughter is allergic to gluten, we study all product declarations. Largely speaking, all sausages from Steff-Houlberg declare starch as potato starch, wheat starch or similarly unspecified starch. However, your 2kg packs of sausages of assorted sizes declare simply starch. Is there any reason for this?
Answer: Sausages in assorted 2kg packs can come from various types of recipes, which we produce at our factories. There is a risk that wheat is present in some of the ingredients used in assorted hotdog sausages and in frankfurters. We would therefore advise you to buy the ordinary Steff-Houlberg sausages where you can identify whether wheat-based ingredients have been used.
Product declaration (23 June, 2004)
Question: Your product declaration states that approx. 135g raw material (pork) is needed to produce 100g finished product. What happens to the last 35g?
Answer:
We have to declare the meat content in our products. The proportion of meat is calculated on what the recipe contains. If the recipe contains 80% meat, the declaration must say so - EXCEPT if, during the production process, there is a loss of water as is the case with drying and cooking. As salami is dried, this means that the weight decreases which, in turn, means that the meat accounts for a greater proportion of the finished salami than it did when the filling was originally mixed.
Example:
A Danish salami contains 85% meat. The product weighs 100g.
After drying, the salami weighs just 70g. In other words, 30% of the original content has been lost in the form of water.
The calculation of the meat content: 85/(100-30) x 100% = 121%. In this case, the declaration should be: 121g pork is used for 100g finished product.
Liver paté (11 June 2004)
Question: I’ve just opened some bacon liver paté from Den Grønne Slagter (The Green Butcher). When I went to spread it on a slice of bread, I saw that the bottom layer was salmon-coloured. The product was purchased one week ago and has at least another week of storage left. I do not want to eat it until I know the reason for the colour.
Answer: The liver paté poses no health risk.
The colour you describe may be because the liver paté contains bacon. Bacon contains a small quantity of nitrite that produces a pinkish colour. The colour can be unevenly distributed as it’s soluble in water. This is most visible where the product is most moist.
Soya and GM Foods (3 June, 2004)
Question: I’m an ordinary (but critical) consumer who is finding it increasingly difficult to find the products I want to buy.
I have a problem with sausages: I’m against genetic engineering of plants, but it’s quite common to cultivate genetically modified soya abroad. Therefore, I no longer buy products with soya protein or vegetable protein on the label.
If Tulip (and other companies in the Danish Crown group) only use GM-free proteins, couldn’t you add “GM-free” on the product declaration?
If soya can’t be guaranteed as GM-free, wouldn’t it be possible to change the recipes and use wheat, potatoes, milk powder or peas instead?
Are there any sausage products that my family and I can use for the barbecue?
Answer: Tulip’s policy is not to use genetically modified ingredients that have to be declared.
New declaration regulations have just been introduced for genetically modified ingredients. This means that soya protein, soya oil and other soya products (as well as other genetically modified crops) MUST be labelled so that the consumer can see whether a product contains genetically modified soya. This applies regardless of whether genetically modified material can be measured in the product or not. Whenever the source has been genetically modified it must be declared
There are certain exceptions to the new regulations: ingredients, which under current regulations do not have to appear on the list of ingredients, must not be declared as genetically modified. In other words, “accompanying” ingredients in a product which have not been added “for the sake of the product”, which are produced on the basis of a genetically modified source, do not have to be declared (e.g. carrier in a seasoning extract). Therefore, in some instances, it can be difficult to guarantee that a product is GM-free.
In general we believe that it’s better to declare what is in a product rather than what is NOT there!
The most important thing for you and your family is to know that Tulip’s sausages do not contain declarable, genetically-modified ingredients and that the soya, maize, rape seed oil etc. that you may find on Tulip’s product declarations are not genetically modified.
Enjoy your barbecue!
Declaration of allergens in Tulip products: (27 May, 2004)
Question: The labels on some of your products state that the product contains gluten. Other products contain no such information. Surely this doesn’t mean that they are gluten-free? Could you not state whether or not each product is gluten-free?
Answer: New labelling regulations are in the pipeline to assist all allergy sufferers. The new regulations demand that gluten (as well as a wide range of other allergens) in a product must be declared.
Gluten and other substances can be present as a carrier in a spice extract or wheat can be used as a basis for stock. In such cases, gluten does not currently have to be declared, but will be declarable under the new legislation from 25 November, 2005.
The fact that some labels declare that gluten is present in a product means that we have now started to change our labels in accordance with the new legislation. However, many others still need to be changed. This is why you can still find many labels where the gluten content is not stated, although the product can contain gluten.
By 25 November 2005 the label will clearly state whether a product contains gluten.
Blood products: (1 May, 2004)
Question: Does Tulip use blood powder, plasma or other blood components in its products?
Answer: Although generally speaking, we don’t use blood products in products sold in Denmark. there are exceptions. These will be declared on the label.