Author Archives: Casey Jacob

Clear labeling needed; Crunch Berries not a fruit

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It’s important for food companies to disclose relevant information to the public so that consumers can make informed decisions about what they eat.

For example, Cap’n Crunch should make it abundantly clear that the berries in its cereal are not real fruit so that Californian Janine Sugawara can intelligently balance her diet.

News 10 in Sacramento reports that Sugawara filed a class-action lawsuit against the makers of Cap’n Crunch cereal last June because one product’s label misled her. She bought Cap’n Crunch cereal for four years because she thought the Crunch Berries were real fruit.

Federal Judge Morrison England, Jr. dismissed the suit, saying, "a reasonable consumer would have understood the product packaging to expressly warrant only that the product contained sweetened corn and oat cereal, which it did."

"As far as this court has been been made aware, there is no such fruit (Crunch Berries) growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world," England wrote.

England also noted that Sugawara’s lawyer, Harold Hewell, filed a simliar suit against Fruit Loops that was also thrown out of court.

Cocaine found in Red Bull drinks

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Cases of Red Bull are being pulled from store shelves by officials in several countries due to the detection of cocaine in the products.

Trace amounts of the drug (0.4 micrograms per liter) were detected in Red Bull Cola by German authorities two weeks ago.

A few days later, Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said that the cocaine level was too low to pose a health risk. However, bans on the drink were initiated in several German states due to concerns that their sale may violate narcotics laws.

When the Department of Health in Taiwan heard about the German’s discovery, they decided to test Red Bull Energy Drink—another product by the same manufacturer. They, too, found 0.4 micrograms of cocaine for each liter tested.

A statement made by the folks at Red Bull two days ago said,

"It would have been absolutely impossible for Asian (or any other) authorities to have found traces of cocaine in Red Bull Energy Drink. We believe that Asian authorities mistakenly applied concerns about Red Bull Simply Cola to Red Bull Energy Drink, a completely different product with an entirely different formula. Nevertheless, we had Red Bull Energy Drink product samples from Asia analyzed by an independent and accredited institute and confirmed that Red Bull Energy Drink does not contain any cocaine."

The same day, officials at the Centre for Food Safety in Hong Kong said a laboratory analysis found 0.1 and 0.3 micrograms of the illegal drug per liter in samples of Red Bull Sugar-free, as well as Red Bull Cola and Red Bull Energy Drink.

Are they lying, too, Red Bull?

The remainder of the statement by Red Bull said,

"A German authority had raised concerns regarding the use of de-cocainized coca leaf extract in Red Bull Simply Cola. …

"De-cocainized coca leaf extracts are used as flavoring in food products around the world and are considered to be safe. Indeed, in 21 C.FR. 182.20, the Food and Drug Administration regulations provide that it is acceptable and safe to use de-cocainized coca in food products in the United States."

Each country—and each consumer for that matter—is entitled to determine the level of risk that is acceptable to them. Food producers should respect that, and provide the information needed to make those determinations.

They should also provide sufficient data when calling anyone a liar. People who are already pulling products likely need more data than results of an undisclosed number of samples tested by a single, unnamed institute. Less arrogance is definitely in order.
 

Sprout farm to begin testing for listeria

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Close to 15,000 pounds of Chang Farm bean and soy sprouts were recalled from retailers and restaurants in four northeastern states last week after Listeria monocytogenes was found in a bag of sprouts at a retail store.

Speaking for the company, Sidney Chang said,

"We followed FDA guidelines to test for salmonella and E. coli 0517:H7. We don’t test for listeria, because they don’t require that."

So?

It is consumers who ultimately decide which food companies stay in business and make a profit, and consumers demand food that is free of all pathogens.

Is Chang Farm willing to step it up?

As stated in an article by The Packer,

“We want to make sure our facility is safe," Chang said. "We’re going to add more measures. We thought we were doing the right things.”

Valley Meats ground beef recalled due to E. coli

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Almost 100,000 pounds of ground beef are being recalled today after an epidemiological investigation linked E. coli O157:H7 infections in three states to the products.

The meat—sold frozen as ground beef, chopped steak, and pre-formed patties—was produced by Valley Meats LLC of Coal Valley, Illinois, on March 10, 2009 and distributed to various consignees nationwide.

A USDA FSIS press release states,

“The problem was discovered through an epidemiological investigation of illnesses. On May 13, 2009, FSIS was informed by the Ohio Department of Health of a cluster of E. coli O157:H7 infections. Illnesses have been reported in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.”

The pathogen, found in the poop of warm-blooded animals, can be killed with sufficient heat. 

However, as the president and chief executive of the American Frozen Food Institute, Kraig R. Naasz, stated today in a letter to the editor of the New York Times,

“While food safety is a shared responsibility among food producers, government agencies and consumers, we recognize that the primary responsibility rests with food producers. Providing consumers with safe and nutritious products is a responsibility frozen food producers stake their names and reputations on.”

The letter was written in response to the Times’ May 15 article on frozen entrees, which Naasz felt did not “fully depict the frozen food industry’s commitment to product safety.”

With the name and reputation of Valley Meats on the line, will they be able to demonstrate a similar commitment to the safety of food? As the data on those sickened by Valley Meats’ products are released, it’s likely we’ll find out.
 

Food Safety Working Group hears ‘good is simply not good enough’

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A White House Food Safety Working Group Listening Session was held Wednesday that marked "the beginning of a significant and critical process that will fully review the safety of our nation’s food supply," according to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.

In his opening remarks, Vislack outlined several specific challenges that would require imput from the stakeholders present at the session. These included the development of an approach consistent between the FDA and USDA for preventing foodborne illnesses, as well as an active surveillance and response system for foodborne disease outbreaks.

In regards to the latter, Vislack stated, "Our regulatory agencies must actively watch for disease outbreaks and take rapid action to ensure that we have effective and targeted recalls. Such recalls are in the interests of public health and the strength of industry sectors that might otherwise be tarnished by massive recalls."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversees the FDA and the CDC, also briefly mentioned the subject of foodborne outbreaks in her opening remarks, saying, "When outbreaks do occur, we must all respond quickly, both to protect public health and to speed the recovery of affected industries."

Sebelius went on to say, “We have already made good use of new tools to protect and inform the public. When peanut products were recalled, we produced a widget that was placed on more than 20,000 external Web sites and resulted in 9.6 million page views. And as we saw during the H1N1 flu outbreak, communication is critical during any kind of crisis and we will use every tool possible to get the word out."

However, she failed to mention how effective that tool was in protecting public health and speeding the recovery of the peanut industry.

As Vislack stated at the end of his opening remarks, "[W]e need to develop a way to measure our success… Lives are at stake and good is simply not good enough."

Antenna in your mocha latte?

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a list of Food Action Defect Levels in the Code of Federal Regulations "to establish maximum levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human use that present no health hazard."

A local news station in Michigan got hold of this list and started asking people on the street how they felt about the number of bug parts allowed in their coffee and the amount of rodent "excreta" tolerated in their chocolate.

My local news station in Wichita, Kansas, broadcast their story Tuesday while I shook my head and chuckled. There were a lot of interesting faces as people looked from their cup to the list and back again.

In the end, I got the impression that the public is okay with a few bug parts (and laugh about getting the extra protein), but won’t stand for the poop.

We here at barfblog.com continually advocate keeping as much poop out of food as possible, and proudly wear our t-shirts that declare, "don’t eat poop" with a message about handwashing on the back.

But I’m not crazy. I realize, like the FDA (not the USDA, as asserted in the story, which primarily regulates only meat and poultry products), that it’s virtually impossible to keep the entire (non-meat and -poultry) food supply 100% poop-free. Therefore, I’m glad there are regulations in place to reduce the microbial risks associated with that poop. (The poop that got into the peanuts at the Peanut Corp. of America plant violated those regs.)

I’m just saying… some poop happens. Risks that cannot be eliminated can, and should, be controlled. Responsible, informed producers and consumers do this every day with tools like the FDA Defect Action Level Handbook and tip-sensitive digital meat thermometers.

Do your part: wash your hands and stick it in.

Couple didn’t know what they were eating

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A 47-year-old Israeli woman crawled feebly to the front door to call for help from a neighbor before passing out. Her partner, also 47, had already fallen unconscious.

FOX News reports that the couple began to feel dizzy after eating a meal of fried blowfish, and could barely breathe when the ambulance arrived.

“From what they have been able to tell us,” Rambam Hospital spokesman David Ratner said, “a neighbor gave them the fish as a gift. They didn’t know what it was; they fried it up for dinner and ate it.“

The couple was unaware of the neurotoxins contained in the skin and certain internal organs of blowfish that are highly toxic to humans. Contacting or ingesting these toxins leads to muscle paralysis and can result in an excruciatingly slow and painful death.

Marine biologist Dr. Nadav Shashar said, though the fish is the second most poisonous vertebrae in the world, it is considered a delicacy in Japan and Korea, "but they know how to prepare it."

Dr. Shashar concluded by saying, “The basic rule of thumb is simple: Don’t stick things in your mouth if you don’t know what they are.”

Don’t eat poop or blowfish poison.

Social media spreads word on flu: CDC

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a modest 2,500 people followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Twitter feed, CDCEmergency, when it was launched during the outbreak of Salmonella linked to Peanut Corp. of America products earlier this year. Now that the CDC is tweeting about the H1N1 flu (aka swine flu), over 100,000 members of the interested public are following.

In addition to the Twitter feed, CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing has responded to public demand for information with a Flickr photo stream, podcasts, videos and a Facebook page. These are the media familiar to today’s consumers.

The director of the National Center for Health Marketing, Dr. Jay Bernhardt, explained that the effectiveness of the agency’s communications through these media is dependent upon public trust, which is developed by speaking the audience’s language.

For example, Berhardt said of the CDC’s Tweets, “The social media team has learned to use a lot of exclamation points in these kinds of things.”

This lit review that I’ve been working on is full of evidence of the effectiveness of communicators that target an audience and then reach out to them with relevant, reliable, rapid and repeated information through the media they use every day.

The review also supports the evaluation of communication efforts to determine their effectiveness (and make changes, if necessary).

Polls by the Harvard School of Public Health have attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of the CDC’s efforts. And while direct observation of actual consumer behaviors would provide a more accurate evaluation, results of the consumer polls have been promising:

“[T]he poll shows that 67% of Americans are now washing their hands or using sanitizers more often, compared with 59% who said the same thing a week ago,” stated a report by MedPage.

“61% of respondents said they were not concerned that they or a family member would get the H1N1 flu within the next year. That’s up from 53% who weren’t worried a week ago.”

People can handle more information—not less—about the risks in their lives. Kudos to CDC.
 

Don’t drink infected pig blood

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Reuters reported yesterday that new information from the World Health Organization suggested pigs sickened with H1N1 swine flu should not be consumed, despite earlier insistence that fully cooked pork is perfectly safe.

The story states,

"The WHO comments appear more cautious than those from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), which said import bans are not required to safeguard public health because the disease is not food-borne and has not been identified in dead animal tissue.

The WHO however said it was possible for flu viruses to survive the freezing process and be present in thawed meat, as well as in blood."

Well, who in their right mind drinks raw pig blood thinking it won’t possibly make them sick?

I didn’t find any statements on the WHO website that mentioned the ability of viruses to survive freezing–or its pertinence to the consumption of fully cooked pork–but I discovered that the WHO, FAO, and OIE have reissued their joint statement from April 30 today to address misunderstanding of the consumption of meat from H1N1 infected pigs. The statement reads, in part,

"Authorities and consumers should ensure that meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead are not processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances."

Sick or dead animals should never be slaughtered, regardless of the cause of illness or death. This  reduces the risk for cross-contamination. The statement reassures,

"Heat treatments commonly used in cooking meat (e.g. 70°C/160°F core temperature) will readily inactivate any viruses potentially present in raw meat products.

Pork and pork products, handled in accordance with good hygienic practices recommended by the WHO, Codex Alimentarius Commission and the OIE, will not be a source of infection."

But I shouldn’t be spelling this stuff out–the WHO should. And they should address the bit about viruses surviving freezing and how that impacts food handlers.

Authorities should communicate the risks and how they’re being managed (or can be managed) in a way the public can understand and the media can’t mess up. It’s their responsibility to a concerned public.

FDA finds seed supplier of sprouts with Salmonella

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Cases of Salmonella Saintpaul linked to raw alfalfa sprouts are now up to 35 and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration thinks they can all be traced to one seed supplier.

That seed supplier, based in Kentucky, is voluntarily withdrawing from the market all of its 50-pound bags that have a lot code starting with “032.” All of these bags contain seeds from Italy and may be contaminated.

In addition to details about the withdrawn sprouts, the FDA alert states,

“FDA has no evidence that alfalfa seeds from other lots, or sprouts grown from them, are affected by this market withdrawal… Suppliers who can verify that their products were not sourced from the affected lots may wish to notify their customers; likewise, retailers, restaurateurs, and food-service facilities who have verified the sources of their alfalfa products may wish to notify their customers.”

Businesses that can prove they get food from safe sources on purpose—and didn’t just get lucky with this one—should brag about that, too.