What's wrong with our food? FSA sees rise in food scares

Did you know that there were 14 incidents of banned genetically modified rice coming into the UK last year? That's just one of the findings from the Food Standards Agency's annual report of incidents - published today . There were 1,714 incidents investigated by the FSA last year - up 14% on 2010. The Food Standards Agency is responsible for protecting public health when it comes to food. The GM rice is a recurring issue for the FSA - there were 14 incidents in 2010 too - the contamination was discovered when the rice was tested at UK borders. But it's hardly the biggest problem. There was an outbreak of Salmonella poisoning from paan leaves with 79 incidents reported to the FSA in 2011 - you can read more about that outbreak here . Pesticide incidents have also increased, with okra the main culprit. The FSA says increased testing at border inspection posts, following a number of alerts, was behind a rise in incidents involving the use of pesticides illegal in the UK and European Union, with 102 in 2011 compared to 55 in 2010. Here some of the key facts: • 1,714 food incidents were investigated by the FSA last year, compared to 1,505 in 2010. This is a further increase on the 1,208 incidents reported in 2009 • Microbiological contamination - ie, Salmonella or ecoli - is up: 281 incidents in 2011, compared to 271 in 2010, and 147 going back to 2006 • There has been a big increase in FSA investigations sparked by whistleblowers: 54 in 2011, compared to 18 in 2010 and 4 in 2009. A total of 24 of the cases were about food safety/contamination There were seven 'high risk' cases in 2011 - events which have big implications for British food safety, including the fallout from the Japanese tsunami for thousands of Brits living in Japan. It included three major outbreaks of E coli, a Botulism outbreak in Scotland and an international outbreak of Salmonella Newport linked to watermelons. In May last year, Germany's major outbreak of E. coli O104 involved over 3,000 cases and over 40 deaths . The FSA says that fenugreek seeds from Egypt were identified as the likely source. The report also breaks down which countries produce the most investigations - a league table headed up by India at the moment, followed by China. The full data is below. What can you do with it? Download the data • DATA: download the full spreadsheet NEW! Buy our book • Facts are Sacred: the power of data (on Kindle) More open data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world's government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world's global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Contact us at [email protected] • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter • Like us on Facebook