In its November 2013 issue, the German consumer magazine Ökotest found oat flake products to be contaminated with mineral oils. Ökotest assessed a total of 21 products including 7 organic oat products, and found all but 2 of them adulterated. In the test report, Ökotest comments that many manufacturers are not aware that mineral oils may not only migrate from primary packaging carton, but also from secondary packaging cartons used during transportation. One of the uncontaminated products was packaged in unspecified type of polymer packaging, the other made use of a double layer of wax paper with an intermediary layer of grease to protect the content from mineral oil migration. Ökotest stresses that stricter and more detailed laws on mineral oil migration are overdue and that the draft guidelines of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) should be adopted as soon as possible.
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Ökotest (November 2013). “Haferflocken – Zarte Flocken in Öl” (in German)
