Link: Food Standards Agency - Gadsby’s withdraws five bakery products
I don’t make a habit of posting blog entries about food, but this one caught my eye - so I thought I’d share it.
Gadsby’s of Southwell Ltd has withdrawn five different bakery products from certain Co-op stores due to incorrect allergen labelling information. Almond is not declared on the labels which may make the products unsuitable for people with a nut allergy. The Agency has issued an Allergy Alert.
The company has withdrawn the affected products from Co-op stores in the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire area. Customers with a nut allergy are advised not to eat the products as they contain almond which is not declared on the labels.
With me so far? Good. So what’s this got to do with SMS and mobile? Tucked away at the bottom of the press release, I found this useful bit of information:
You can get details of all the latest allergy alerts as soon as they’re issued by getting the details sent as a SMS text message direct to your mobile phone.
To sign up to this free service, simply send the text message ‘START ALLERGY’ to the number 62372. To unsubscribe, just text ‘STOP ALLERGY’ to the same number.
Having never had a nut allergy, and not really being allergic to anything (except Marmite, and that’s more of a ‘eww it’s disgusting’ thing than a proper allergy), I didn’t realise there was an Allergy Alert service - and it was available by SMS. How neat is that? If you do know someone that has a nut allergy, or you’re just curious to know when this sort of information is released, you can get it delivered straight to your phone courtesy of the UK’s Food Standards Agency.
Another great example of the public sector finally getting on the mobile bandwagon.
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Danlane on 
Comment by Ewan on 11 July 2007:
Genius
Comment by technokitten on 11 July 2007:
Yup, genius in theory. Except the FSA don’t always get it right. The FSA has had a sms alert service for some years to alert anyone and everyone about problem food products - typically product recalls and the like. I signed up to the service to try it out when it first started, maybe 3 years ago or something like that. There was no reply path and to unsubscribe, I had to go back to the website, log in and unsubscribe myself that way. Ok, a bit clunky, but for the time (1 or 2 years ago), it was adequate.
And then, out of the blue, I start getting FSA messages again. And I have no idea why. The messages always include a URL - for the internet, not a wap or mobile friendly site (but at least they’ve taken away the http://www bit so that you don’t go to their website by mistake and rack up data charges. But what’s the point of a website URL in a text message these days?
And what’s more they *still* don’t have a reply path. They don’t send you any text message to give you the option to opt-out and I really can’t be bothered to trail through their website to find out how to opt-out.
I serioiusly applaud the FSA for offering the service at all. That is both forward thinking and really useful. I just wish that some of these fundamental mistakes weren’t still being made. And they’d be so simple to fix. And the FSA does better than many… don’t get me started about Lakeside Shopping Centre!
Comment by steve procter on 12 July 2007:
The FSA came to iTAGG about 9 months ago to setup the new 62372 sms texting and subscription services (btw, 372 is FSA on your keypad) and clearly from their plans they are a lot more forward thinking than many government agencies and have been great to work with.
Sure there are one or two things with wap links that could eventually be added, but generally these alert subscriptions are working well as they are simple!! Too many ideas out there these days are overly complex and mobile consultants have clearly spent far too long thinking about it when frankly people still just want a quick text alert, with a web address they can check later when they are at their more familiar desktop PC.
We mobile bods really should learn that many people on the street are still not their when it comes to wapsites/websites on mobiles (try asking your parents what the difference is between a wap site and a mobile friendly website and watch their eyes glaze over!!)…we possibly need to slow down and go at the pace of real people.
Oh and by the way, when you subscribe to the food or allergy subscription groups, you will receive a standard sms confirming your subscription and telling you how to unsubscribe. This is a standard requirement for building subscription systems and the iTAGG sms and mms platform conforms accordingly.
steve/itagg.com
Comment by technokitten on 12 July 2007:
@steve proctor
Maybe the current service complies but the alerts I’m getting don’t. And if you’re going to point someone to a link, then you should just make that link available so that it *is* simple, i.e. I can click on the link in the message and read more straight away rather than having to go home, get my laptop out, switch it on, load firefox/ie/whatever, find the URL from my phone, type it in again on the browser, wait for page to load, then read the information.
Now which is simpler?
Comment by steve procter on 12 July 2007:
for a techno kitten then viewing it on your mobile is easier
But for my Dad and millions like him then indeed going home and looking at it on his PC is exactly what he will do and wants to do. To him a mobile is something you turn on when you want to call or at a push send a text and then turn off again.
The biggest mistake technology consultants make is pushing the population along too quickly. My dad only sent his 2nd ever MMS last night. He has about 2 more years before he will be ready to surf web pages on a mobile.
steve
Comment by David Payne, FSA website editor on 3 August 2007:
Thanks for the feedback on the SMS service we offer here at the FSA. We’ll certainly look at the comments on suggested improvements but we’re pleased that most people recognise the value of sending texts to consumers with a food allergy or intolerance. Technokitten, sorry you started getting unsolicited texts again. I wonder if your number mistakenly got included when we switched to ITAGG a while back and migrated the numbers over at our end?
Comment by technokitten on 30 August 2007:
thanks for the comment David. I have more of a problem with the fact that you don’t offer a reply path for easy unsubscribing than the fact that you got my number muddled up somehow. Being able to unsubscribe *easily* i.e. via my mobile phone, is basic best practice and it’s disheartening to see that a Government agency isn’t deploying best practice. I’m still getting the texts and there still *isn’t* a reply path. Or even an ad hoc message every now and then offering the option to unsubscribe.
How is the business community expected to comply with best practice, offer good service and do the right thing if a Government agency isn’t doing that?
Comment by Steve Procter on 31 August 2007:
Techokitten…
I am sorry but you are wrong. FSA do offer the industry standard way of unsubscribing - which as a mobile industry consultant you will know is using the STOP command.
There was clearly a small mix up when they switched over to us - and we all know how difficult migration of services can be sometimes. But if you subscribed anew now then you would receive the following automatic message…
“You have been successfully subscribed to allergy on 62372. To unsubscribe send stop allergy to 62372″
This message forms part of the industry standard requirement for subscription services, and you as well as anyone knows that the START/STOP commands are the correct ways for users to unsubscribe.
The FSA use the iTAGG platform for their services and one of the ready-made modules is a subscription plugin, and this has been built to conform to the requirements for subscriptions - and as such STOP commands are processed automatically.
steve/itagg