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Alko is a
limited company owned by the Finnish Government, and acting as the national
alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland. Going through the single malt
Scotch whiskies listed in Alko’s catalogue, I had noticed some time ago that somewhere
along the line, the ‘E150a’ markings had mysteriously disappeared. When had
this happened? Closer inspection in personal archives soon revealed that the
vanishing had occurred already towards the end of 2011. The 7 June – 2 October
catalogue still contained information on the caramel colouring of whiskies, but
from the next one (3 October 2011 – 31 January 2012), the markings were gone.
The natural follow-up question was: Why had such a deletion taken place?
The Alcohol
Control Laboratory (ACL), which is part of Alko’s organisation and responsible
for testing the quality of alcoholic beverages, told that this was based on
Alko’s own decision. There were various reasons for the ruling. Some producers
claim to be using the colouring only for the purpose of retaining consistency
between batches, which would mean that E150a would not always be needed. Also earlier,
the ‘E’ markings were only to be found on more recently introduced products,
while the older ones remained unmarked. This constituted an obvious breach of
impartiality. Moreover, although the EU regulations do require the labelling of
potentially harmful allergens, E150a is not classified among them.
However, probably
the most important reason given by the ACL was that it turned out to be
practically impossible to maintain a reliable record of the use of E150a,
because its chemical analysis proved too challenging under prevailing
conditions. The liquid chromatography method used by the laboratory could not
reliably detect the presence of E150a, and since the colouring itself is quite
harmless, the decision was made to remove the markings altogether. The director
of the laboratory suggested that the situation would be altered, if a reliable
method of analysis could be found.
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