Belgica mussels under the microscope; is New Zealand better than Old Zeeland?

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Douglas Powell

A year ago Amy and I were sitting in a Wellington, New Zealand restaurant overlooking the harbor, pulling mussels from the shell (it was a holiday complete).

Consumers in Belgium are just beginning to enjoy the annual harvest of so-called Belgica mussels. According to a report forwarded by our European safe food correspondent, Albert Amgar:

Last year there was a lot of hubbub around the so-called presence of toxic substances in Belgica mussels. This toxin would provoke Diarrheic Shellfish Poisoning, characterized by gastric and intestinal problems, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and intestinal cramps. Counter analyses could not confirm the presence of this toxin.

The mussels cultivated in Belgian waters underwent bimonthly bacteriological testing conducted by the Federal Agency for Food Safety. Weekly tests were also taken in order to detect the possible presence of toxins in mussels and the presence of toxin-bearing algae in the water where the mussels are raised. French authorities are responsible for testing the mussels raised in France.

Belgica was the name given to a Roman province encompassing parts of modern Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg. These Belgica mussels are 20 per cent from Belgian waters and 80 per cent from French waters of the North Sea. Apparently, the less-fleshier Zeeland mussels, from the Zeeland waters of the North Sea – Zeeland is a southern province of The Netherlands – compete with Belgica mussels for the food dollars of Belgian consumers (apparently American and Canadian country-of-origin labels aren’t the only confusing – and largely meaningless – labels out there).

To continue on with the wiki-ized history, the name New Zealand originated with Dutch cartographers – Dutch explorers being the first Europeans to arrive — who called the islands Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand.

Katie, enjoy some NZ mussels; cause as the poster says, New Zealand: Better than Old Zealand.

Organic crap gets crappier

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Douglas Powell

One of the reasons I don’t buy organic – besides being on a professor’s salary, which I have no complaints about but I’m certainly not going to waste it on organic – is that the so-called claims and rules are followed about as thoroughly as Peanut Corporation of America can pass an audit and end up having 4,000 products recalled because Salmonella makes people barf. Every time someone says, “Organic has strict rules for composting …” I chuckle and wonder about verification.

The Washington Post reports this morning what many have been saying for over a decade – that the sham of organics would eventually be found out.

Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be found in 90 percent of organic baby formula.

Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Organic mock duck contains a synthetic ingredient that gives it an authentic, stringy texture.

Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country’s adults say they buy organic food often or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health.

But the USDA program’s shortcomings mean that consumers, who at times must pay twice as much for organic products, are not always getting what they expect: foods without pesticides and other chemicals, produced in a way that is gentle to the environment.

The argument is not over whether the non-organics pose a health threat, but whether they weaken the integrity of the federal organic label.

Don’t care about a label. I’m more interested in food that doesn’t make people barf. As far as baby food, I don’t feed any of that organic crap to baby Sorenne, although making such a statement is essentially an invitation to family services to check out my terrible parenting techniques.

My colleague Katija Blaine covered this thoroughly back in 2003.

An episode of the popular U.S. television show, 20/20 in 2000, sparked a fierce debate over the microbial safety of organically grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Are organic foods safer than conventional foods? On the show, correspondent John Stossel concluded that organic produce was no safer than conventional produce and might in fact be more dangerous because of the heavy use of manure in organic farming (Ruterberg & Barringer, 2000). Such statements have been supported by several prominent food scientists (Tauxe, 1997; Forrer et al., 2000) while the organic industry has argued that their strict standards on manure usage reduces such risks (DiMatteo, 1997). The organic industry has refrained from making direct claims of improved microbial food safety. Katherine DiMatteo, president of the Organic Trade Association has stated publicly that "Organic is not a food safety claim" (Juday, 2000)

According to the most recent expert report from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT, 2002) "the available scientific information is insufficient to ensure that food-borne pathogens are killed during composting and soil application."

Since organic growers already have a certification and inspection system, the CGSB organic standards could be expanded to better incorporate food safety concerns. Specific additions would include ensuring adequate facilities and training to ensure worker hygiene and recommendations for processing and processing water. The documentation, monitoring and regulation of high-risk inputs give organic growers a head start over conventional growers who may be trying to implement an on-farm food safety system from scratch. It is also the responsibility of food producers to use knowledge to aggressively reduce the risk of food and waterborne illness, whether conventional or organic or somewhere in between. And with both conventional and organic systems, verification through microbial testing is required to demonstrate that actions match words.
This is not about organic and conventional. Food safety goes far beyond ideology. As has been stated elsewhere, poor farming and processing practices are the product of poor farmers and processors.

As I said in 2007, the production of safe food is the responsibility of everyone in the farm-to-fork chain — conventional or organic — and food safety, especially with fresh produce, must begin on the farm.

References

Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB). 1999. Organic Agriculture. National Standard of Canada. CGSB. CAN/CGSB-32.310-99.

DiMatteo KT. 1997. Does Organic Gardening Foster Foodborne Pathogens? To the Editor. JAMA. 277(21):1679-80.

Juday D. 2000. Are organic foods really better for you? Natural grown killers in organic food make it no safer than produce grown in pesticides. BridgeNews Service (Knight Ridder) February, 14.

Ruterberd J and Barringer F. 2000. Apology highlights ABC reporter’s contrarian image. The New York Times August 14. C1.

Tauxe RV. 1997. Does Organic Gardening Foster Foodborne Pathogens? In Reply. JAMA. 277(21):1679-80.

New Canadian organic logo is pornographic?

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Raise a butter tart and Molson Export – or Labatt Crystal if you’re into the skid stuff – it’s Canada Day, the celebration of the July 1, 1867 enactment of the British North America Act, which united Canada as a single country of four provinces.

The N.Y. Times has a fun piece of famous ex-pats saying what they miss most about Canada – original Coffee Crisp chocolate bars seems to be the best thing folks can conjure up – but more importantly to some, the new Canadian organic food logo went into effect (below, left, exactly as shown).

Organic is a production standard. Doesn’t mean anything about quality, taste or safety. It’s a marketing concept, but now they have their own label.

All produce will have to be completely organic to be stamped with the logo, while products with multiple ingredients must have 95 per cent organic content.

Farmers who want their produce to carry the new "Canada Organic" label have to apply in writing for certification. The application must include:

* The name of the agricultural product.
* The substances used in its production.
* The manner in which those substances are used.

The logo will also be used on USDA-certified organic products imported from the United States.

Between 70 and 80 per cent of all organic products available in Canada are imported primarily from the U.S., according to government figures.

My group has written extensively about organic and conventional food safety – it’s just not on. There are good farmers and bad farmers, conventional, organic and otherwise.

But this logo? I sent it to a few of my colleagues and asked them what they thought – all the results were too pornographic to publish here. Maybe on twitter.

Dean Cliver responds to Rachael Ray 20 years earlier

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Rachael Ray (right, sampling goods in Florida last weekend) offered up some suggestions for so-called healthier cooking in that annoying USA Weekend insert to many local newspapers, including this gem:

"Look at labels. … If you can’t read an ingredient, chances are you should not be putting it in your body."

Dr. Dean Cliver, who officially retired October 1, 2007 and is winding down from 46 years in academia, battling infectious agents in food and water, realized that he had come up to the solution to this very problem some 20 years ago and decided to once again share his thoughts with barfblog.com. Dr. Cliver’s proposed label is left, bottom.

The following was originally published in University of Wisconsin-Madison AG LIFE LINES, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 2, page 6, and republished in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol. 34, No. 4, Mar-Apr 1989, page 18.

A subtle and probably pernicious trend in the U.S. food supply seems to be occurring virtually unnoticed. If one reads the information on a food package, as it seems few do, one finds that many food in the U.S. today are composed almost entirely of ingredients. The use of ingredients in foods has become so widespread and flagrant that one can hardly guess what will appear next on the growing list of polysyllabic horrors printed on packages. Through insouciance or ineptitude, we have let the situation get quite out of hand.

Labels seem to be intended rather to obfuscate than to inform. Aside from water, which evidently abounds in these products (though who knows where it has been before it goes into the food?), hardly any of the names that appear on these lists are comprehensible to the average consumer or even pronounceable. The acronyms are even worse. It is not enough to know that “BHA” stands for “butylated hydroxyanisol.” How are we to know where and by whom the hydroxyanisole we are about to ingest was butylated or whether the hydroxyanisole itself was natural or synthetic?

Though most consumers apparently do not read labels at all, those who do seem to have become jaded. My son asked me recently whether the “regular”-flavored generic toothpaste we had just purchased contained natural or artificial regular. And what about the blind — should lists also appear in Braille?

There is little doubt that most of these ingredients are harmful, at least at some level, in foods. Why, for example, would salt be listed as “sodium chloride” if there were nothing to hide? Would any of us willingly be called “The Sodium Chloride of the Earth"? Sugar now comes in enough forms to confound the ablest pancreas. Fats are listed as though they were all polyunsaturated, without any indication of the degree of polity. Plain, American English is nowhere to be found.

Not only are we consuming ingredients ourselves, but we are inflicting them on our unsuspecting children, mindless of potential harm to all future generations. Small wonder that behavioral problems abound in the society whose children have been fed ingredients virtually from birth! For example, many young people today are probably essentially addicted to calcium propionate in their bread. What becomes of them if their supply is cut off? Packages marked “no preservatives” should probably be viewed with extreme caution.

Time and the press have made it clear that the predominance of ingredients in U.S. foods is largely due to the greed of profit-hungry food manufacturers. There is little doubt that this is true: if one travels to parts of the world where the profit motive has been outlawed, one finds that foods are virtually free of ingredients. This has such a favorable effect on quality that people are willing to stand in long lines for food every day. By contrast, hardly anyone stands in line to get food in the U.S. — with all those ingredients why bother?

I submit that the time has come for action on this matter. Consumer groups and enlightened members of the general public must bring pressure to bear on Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to mandate reduced levels of ingredients in foods, probably with a view to an eventual complete ban. Nowadays, virtually the only food one can buy that is almost certainly free of ingredients is an egg in its original shell, and we are now being told not to eat more than one of them per week. How are we to survive on such a diet?

American food manufacturers, in their cupidity, must not be allowed to continue perpetrating this sesquipedalian atrocity on the indifferent or benighted public. Let us speak out now, so that those in government will recognize their duty to regulate, reduce, and eventually eliminate ingredients from the US food supply! Let’s get the American public back on real, ingredient-free food, before accumulated subtle deficiencies and abnormalities put us all under the table to stay. Our posterity and their posterity demand this of us.

Know where food comes from

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Mayra Rivarola

Traceability was a popular topic when I started working for Doug last summer, with the Salmonella-linked-to-tomatoes-or-was-it-peppers outbreak. The current peanut butter-linked outbreak follows the same trends as the list of recalled products is on the rise. As a consumer, I wonder: do producers know their suppliers and where their food is coming from?

The FDA warned consumers to postpone consumption of anything containing peanut butter or peanut butter paste. This is where labeling becomes important. Not only should consumers read labels, they also need some assurance that labels are accurate.

A woman suffered a severe allergic reaction after eating a parfait in a Canadian Starbucks last week. She purchased the parfait after an employee assured the dessert was nut-free. The ingredients list also failed to mention nuts. I am pretty sure this woman will have a hard time trusting labels after this.

I was diagnosed with celiac disease a few weeks ago and I know how this feels. I have to avoid products containing gluten – a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and triticale.

Gluten can also be found as a food additive in the form of flavoring, or as stabilizing or thickening agent. In such cases, producers are not required to include the protein on the label because it is classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) by the FDA. There is also no official definition as to what constitutes a gluten-free product, so celiacs like me are recommended to buy products from trusted sources.

That Canadian Starbucks is not a trusted source.

Whether it’s because of food allergies, intolerance to gluten, or salmonella, food processors need to be aware of where their products come from and what they contain.

Did your microwave nuke the bacteria?

Posted on October 13, 2007 by Douglas Powell

N.Y. Times business columnist Andrew Martin writes in Sunday’s paper (Oct. 14/07) that he’s gotten used to the idea that hamburgers can make you sick. But frozen dinners?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says at least 165 people in 31 states have become ill with the same strain of salmonella, with the Banquet pot pies being the likely source.

Martin says,

"it is relatively easy to figure out when a hamburger is well done by checking to see that it is no longer pink."

Uh-oh. Color is a lousy indicator of doneness. But more about that in upcoming weeks.

Martn continues,

"it’s preposterous to expect consumers to know how the cooking power of their microwave compares with others."

Douglas Powell, an associate professor and scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University said,

"Even if I have a 1,000-watt microwave, how do I know if it’s high, medium or low?"

Professor Powell bought one of the pot pies and cooked it, following the instructions, then checked the temperature with a thermometer.

After four minutes, the pie was 48 degrees, leading him to conclude his microwave was low wattage. After six minutes, it was 204 degrees near the top but 127 degrees farther into the pie.

He finally ate it after zapping it for another two minutes, when the pie temperature was 194 degrees. (An account of the experiment is at barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu)

Martin further says,

with the proliferation of ready-to-cook foods in the frozen foods aisle, the variation in the cooking times is a little scary. Is it long enough to kill the bugs, even if my microwave is 15 years old?

ConAgra Foods finally came to its senses on Thursday night and recalled all of its pot pies. It also acknowledged problems with its cooking instructions.

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