In recent months, many people have had difficulty finding certain foods in stores, such as sesame seeds in Spain or hamburger buns in France. The reason is that many products, more than 7,000, have been withdrawn from the European market due to the presence of ethylene oxide, a toxic substance that is not permitted in food. From September 2020 until the time of writing this article, 578 notifications due to this cause have been registered in the European food alert system (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed - RASFF), from 24 Member States, including Spain, which has issued 38 alerts. This is an anomalous situation, given the number of notifications and affected products, which, due to its magnitude, is reminiscent of the incident recorded in the summer of 2017, when Millions of eggs were recalled from the market due to the presence of an unauthorized pesticide called fipronil.
