The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition has launched a food alert in relation to a whole rye flour from the supermarket that contains ergot alkaloids. If affected batches are consumed, they could cause symptoms such as hallucinations, seizures, numbness, or cyanosis, which is why you recommend avoiding their intake.
The product in question is "Whole Rye Flour" from the BIOGRÀ brand with a best-before date of 05/30/2023 and batch number 21-005, packaged in a plastic bag (500 gr).
The AESAN has learned of this information through the Coordinated System for Rapid Information Exchange through an alert notification sent by Catalonia. The notice has been sent to other autonomous communities to stop the marketing of the affected lots.
According to the information available, the initial distribution has been to the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha, the Balearic Islands, Galicia, Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Castilla y León, the Community of Madrid, La Rioja, the Basque Country and Catalonia, but it is not ruled out. that there may be redistributions in other places.
This agency under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs asks the population not to consume the affected batches if they are kept at home and warns that if they have already been consumed and symptoms compatible with ergotism are experienced (hallucinations, pain, convulsions, numbness, tingling, cyanosis , absence of pulse and intense and sudden cold in the extremities) to go to the nearest health center.
Ergot, with the scientific name Claviceps purpurea, is a parasitic fungus that appears in more than 50 species and can cause poisoning if ingested. The disease it produces is known as ergotism, but it is also popularly called "hellfire" or "Saint Anton's fire".
The first written reference to this poisoning is from 1800, but very similar descriptions of its symptoms had already been made in works from previous centuries. In A Brief History of the Vikings, Manuel Velasco points out that the Viking berserkers acquired strength and insensitivity to pain due to the ingestion of bread and beer contaminated with this fungus.
