A SWINDON shopkeeper is demanding to know why she is still waiting for a list of food containing a cancerous dye five days after the health scare was announced.

Rosemary Earle of MI Earle in Newport Street, Old Town, still hasn't had a letter stating which products contain the dye.

The Swindon Council has written 1,300 letters to shopkeepers, which were posted on Tuesday afternoon and yesterday.

But Rosemary says the letters should have been sent by Monday at the latest.

"Swindon Council should have got straight onto this over the weekend.

"We have a duty of care and it's important these products are removed from the shelves."

The article we published in the Advertiser yesterday revealed that some corner shops in Swindon are still selling banned products in particular beef and tomato Pot Noodle which contains Sudan 1.

Rosemary said: "Many shopkeepers don't have time to read the newspapers or watch the television so they would not have heard about this.

"Luckily my husband and I had Friday night off so we heard about everything on the television.

"We called up the council on Monday and we were told to speak to the Food Standards Agency to get the list of foods.

"We received the list and took the foods off the shelf but it was very confusing especially the issue about sell-by dates.

"Before we got the list though we were busy selling things over the weekend and I'm sure we sold a couple of the banned foods.

"It should have been a priority to get the products off the shelves."

Rob Taylour, public protection group leader, said: "We started writing to the 1,300 retailers on Tuesday.

"The communication came to us on Monday evening at around 4.30pm that FSA wanted us to notify retailers about the particular products that were subject to recall.

"We acted as quickly as we could to let shopkeepers know about the products."

The facts

SUDAN 1 is a red dye that is used for colouring solvents, oils, waxes, petrol, shoe polish and floor polish.

It is not allowed to be added to food in the UK and the rest of the EU. Sudan 1 could cause an increased risk of cancer. At the level that is present in the food, the risk of developing cancer is small. A list of the contaminated products can be found on the Food Standards Agency website, www.food.gov.uk

Diana Milne