Wrong sprinkles? It takes the biscuit

BUSINESSES are used to dealing with complaints from customers – but for one bakery owner, a protest over sprinkles really took the biscuit.

Rich Myers was left shocked after a trading standards officer walked into his shop and announced he was being investigated over his choice of decoration.

For the US-imported sprinkles contain E127, which is only approved for use in the UK and EU in cocktail cherries and candied cherries. Studies have linked it to hyperactivity disorders and tumours in rats and the European Food Safety

Authority supported restrictions on E127 in 2011. It means Mr Myers’s popular bakery, Get Baked, in Headingley, Leeds, has had to take its best-selling products off the shelves – a sprinkle-covered chocolate birthday cake and a sprinkle and raspberry-glazed doughnut cookie, pictured.

He said: ‘The thing with sprinkles is British sprinkles are crap because the colours just run so they end up with nothing on them. Not many people get annoyed about sprinkles but someone obviously has because they’ve reported us.’ Many of his customers have expressed their ‘devastation’ at the outcome of the investigation, dubbed ‘sprinkle-gate’. A West Yorkshire Trading Standards spokesman said: ‘We stand by this advice and would urge all food business operators, when seeking to use imported foods containing additives, to check that they are permitted for use in the UK.’