the great fig roll shortage

The national fig roll crisis: how will we cope?
Martin WainwrightMonday April 21, 2008The Guardian

If the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can trigger a tornado in Texas, then it is perhaps no wonder that Britain's current fig roll shortage can be traced back to wasp problems in Turkey.
We were alerted to the absence of the legendary biscuit by a concerned reader. Further investigation revealed that supermarket shelves are indeed empty. Some branches of Sainsbury's have even put up notices, informing customers of the current crisis, which began with hard times for the pollinating fig wasp of Anatolia.

"It's been so exceptionally hot and dry there that the fig harvest is down by half from previous years," says Christine Welberry of the Food and Drink Federation. The wasps are wilting, while in the background the internet buzzes with frustrated roll seekers.
"Just got back from Waitrose - the man told me that two weeks ago he'd been told to take the price ticket off the shelf ... seems like fig rolls are no more (well for the foreseeable future anyway)," says A Lot Ment on Digital Spy's food forum. "I order online from Asda at the minute and I have noticed you haven't been able to buy these for the past few weeks," responds Louismum.

The crunch came because the heat coincided with the discovery of contamination. At the end of March, Paula Waldron, head of the food incidents unit at the Foods Standards Agency, wrote to all British companies importing Turkish dried figs. Eurolaw-busting levels of a poison called aflatoxin had been found in consignments, she said, and everyone needed to carry out their own additional anti-toxin tests. The poison comes from a natural mould that is a parasite of figs, and has been linked with cancer.

Such crises aren't uncommon in foods, but the disappearance of a line as venerable as the fig roll is. As Welberry warns: "Buffer stocks have been used up and so the continuity of fig supplies has been affected."

Rolls should be back on the shelves in a month or so, but if you can't wait that long, you could always grow your own figs. This is perfectly possible, even in the north of England, where mass concern about fig rolls first surfaced. In Victorian Sheffield, steelworkers' lunchtime figs ended up in the city's river Don whose water was heated by factory effluent. Hence the fig trees growing along the riverbanks near the M1 viaduct. If the summer's nice, get harvesting.



so if you are down the co-op looking for your favourite fig rolls and can't find any - you now know why.

Personally I prefer Jaffacakes
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