114 | Cocoa Compliance: Risky! | Allergen Thresholds (new guidance) |
Plus nerding out on the economics of lettuce and jail time for etheylene glycol execs
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Meetup this week 16th/17th November
Cocoa compliance: risks and solutions
New allergen thresholds published
Food Safety News and Resources;
How much does it cost to grow lettuce (just for ?fun?);
Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents
🎧 On the go? Listen now (for paying subscribers) 🎧
Two years jail time for 200 child deaths does NOT sound like justice. But should executives from the factory linked to ethylene glycol-related deaths from allegedly contaminated propylene glycol be punished at all? After all, they THOUGHT they were putting safe propylene glycol into their products, say their legal team. It’s a tricky one.
A report on the sentencing for that crime is in this week’s food fraud news. Read about the fraudulent adulteration - and its horrific consequences - in Issue 75.
Welcome to Issue 114. And an extra big welcome to 👏👏👏 ‘QMS’, Leah and Rich. Your financial support makes this newsletter possible. Thank you.
Also this week: cocoa, allergen thresholds and lettuce growing. Plus a bunch of dreadful baby-food recalls and dramas from the United States in this week’s free food safety news.
Karen
Meetup this week
Join me and other readers for a ‘water cooler chat’ in our meetup this Thursday (or Friday). This is a chance to meet like-minded food professionals in a friendly, supportive space. Expect 5 to 20 attendees and be prepared for an intimate, interactive experience, with cameras on.
Topic: The year in review – highlights, lowlights, what’s next |
Time: November 16th UTC 21:00 | Click here to convert to your local timezone | 9:00 pm London | 08:00 am (Friday 17th) Sydney | 1:00 pm Los Angeles | 4:00 pm New York | 5:00 am (Friday) Hong Kong |
Cocoa, Kids and Deforestation
Compliance risks from cocoa supply chains
Cocoa is often flagged as a problematic ingredient with respect to environmental sustainability and labour practices. It’s also one of the commodities addressed in the EU’s new deforestation regulations.
We all want to buy cocoa that is produced ethically and using good environmental practices, but it turns out this is quite difficult!
Certification schemes, including Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International, have attempted to support good sustainability and labour practices in cocoa supply chains for decades, with mixed results. Activists claim they don’t work.
In 2021, the large American chocolate brand Hershey and its certifier Rainforest Alliance were sued for false advertising, over issues related to child labour in Hershey’s cocoa supply chain.
In August 2023, a different group filed a lawsuit against US Customs and Border Protection, claiming it had ignored extensive evidence of child labour in cocoa in West Africa, and seeking to have it uphold a federal ban on the import of products created with child labour.
Investigators who visited cocoa farms in West Africa found child workers within supply chains certified by both Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International. Their conclusions were damning, and a report on their investigation concluded “the certification system is inherently broken”, by failing to help farmers, workers or the environment.
Ethical standards and certifications for cocoa
Certification schemes – shockingly - don’t include widespread auditing of cocoa farms, which are often small and located far from major urban centres. I’m a former employee of a certification business so I’m acutely aware of how expensive it is to get auditors to remote sites.
I’ve often wondered how certification schemes like the Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade could check environmental and labour practices at individual cocoa farms.
Turns out they (mostly) don’t, at least according to a 2018 report by the University of Sheffield (UK). The report’s authors say ethical certification schemes for the cocoa industry rely on self-verification, with farmers self-reporting to cooperatives and cooperatives reporting compliance to certifiers.
The cooperatives receive a premium for certified cocoa, compared to uncertified cocoa, so there is a conflict of interest when it comes to cooperatives self-reporting their compliance with certification standards.
As for the certification bodies, surely they verify self-reported results? Not necessarily. One certifier who was interviewed for the University of Sheffield report said “We are working with around 11,800 cocoa farmers, so we have not been able to visit any farms as of now”.
Not any. None. No farms visited. So for that unnamed certification body, as of 2018, no one from their organisation had ever visited a single cocoa farm to check whether their standards were being adhered to.
We are working with around 11,800 cocoa farmers, so we have not been able to visit any farms as of now - Certification scheme owner
Researchers for that report spoke to workers on certified cocoa farms in Ghana who reported appalling work conditions… conditions that were not in compliance with the certification standards.
Some farmers told the researchers they were aware that certification schemes require them to meet more stringent labour standards, but reported that the extra premium they receive per bag of certified beans was not enough to cover the costs of meeting the standards. So they just didn’t bother.
Other farmers interviewed for the report didn’t understand the difference between certified and un-certified beans at all.
Deforestation and cocoa: a solution?
When it comes to verifying environmental practices at cocoa farms, it seems likely that certification schemes face similar hurdles as they do with labour standards. However, with the EU deforestation rules now demanding that cocoa not be sourced from areas that were recently deforested, the stakes have most certainly been raised.
Organisations importing cocoa to the European Union will need to show that their imports are sourced from areas free of deforestation. Europe is the world’s largest importer of cocoa beans.
Side note (food fraud warning): New EU deforestation rules are expected to have a significant impact on European companies that do not already have good visibility over their supply chains. The rules create new motivations and opportunities for fraud in cocoa supply documentation because the ability to trade with European partners will be dependent on documents related to the cocoa’s origin and activities at the place of origin.
One way to monitor deforestation within and near cocoa farms is with satellite imaging. Fairtrade have partnered with a satellite-based technology provider which can monitor deforestation within and around farms in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. The data is intended to be shared with cocoa cooperatives, which represent hundreds of thousands of farmers and millions of hectares of orchards, providing them with access to markets from which they might otherwise be excluded.
Takeaways for food safety professionals
Cocoa supply chains are risky from a compliance perspective, due to challenges with labour practices, including child labour, and for EU deforestation rules.
There have been a number of lawsuits against chocolate brands in the US, and confectionery makers are vulnerable to being accused of ‘false advertising’ when they claim to have ethical or sustainable supply chains for chocolate.
EU deforestation rules have created new motivations and opportunities for fraud within cocoa supply chain documents, and any fraud could impact importers outside Europe as well as within it.
Data solutions which can provide evidence of ‘deforestation-free’ status will be needed, with one solution being satellite imagery technology.
Sources:
Genevieve LeBaron (2018) The Global Business of Forced Labour: Report of Findings, SPERI & University of Sheffield. https://respect.international/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/The-Global-Business-of-Forced-Labour-Report-of-Findings-University-of-Sheffield-2018.pdf
Corporate Accountability Lab. (n.d.). CAL files suit against Hershey and Rainforest Alliance. [online] Available at: https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2021/11/2/cal-files-suit-against-hershey-and-rainforest-alliancenbsp.
Corporate Accountability Lab. (2021). CAL finds evidence of child labor on Rainforest Alliance certified farms. [online] Available at: https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2021/10/25/cal-finds-evidence-of-child-labor-on-rainforest-alliance-certified-farms.
Morpeth-Spayne, R. (2023). Fairtrade-Satelligence partnership to harness satellite imaging. [online] International Confectionery Magazine. Available at: https://in-confectionery.com/fairtrade-satelligence-partnership-to-harness-satellite-imaging/
New Allergen Thresholds
I’ve previously reported on the work of the FAO’s allergen expert committee, which has been working to create recommended thresholds for precautionary labelling of allergens for several years now.
Reminder: precautionary labelling for allergens (PAL) is the “may contain traces of ...” statements you see on food packs in some countries.
Until now, food manufacturers haven’t been sure of how much ‘trace amounts’ of allergens would be too much for allergic consumers.
It’s a problem that is increasingly causing headaches for food manufacturers. The number of allergic consumers is rising, and awareness of allergens in food is also increasing. Undeclared allergens in foods are the most common type of food recall in many countries.
It is difficult to establish ‘safe’ levels of trace allergens in food, because of the differing levels of sensitivity among allergic people. But the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have done it. They have been working on this since 2020.
The FAO’s expert committee aimed to:
· Establish the threshold levels for ‘priority allergens’ below which the majority of allergic consumers would not suffer an adverse reaction;
· Choose appropriate analytical methods and minimum performance criteria for those methods;
· Provide guidance on precautionary labelling and consider possible exemptions for certain ingredients.
They have previously published threshold levels for priority allergens wheat, crustacea, eggs, fish, milk, peanut, sesame, and certain tree nuts (almond, cashew, hazelnut, pecan, pistachio and walnut).
Last week the committee shared recommended thresholds for a further set of allergens. Here are the committee’s recommended reference dose (Rfd), in milligrams per total protein from the allergenic source.
Celery: 1 mg
Soy: 10 mg
Brazil nut, Macadamia nut, and pine nut: 1 mg
Mustard: 1 mg
Lupin: 10 mg
Buckwheat: 10 mg
Oat: An oat-specific RfD is unavailable, as Immunoglobulin E (IgE) -mediated food allergy risks identified for oats stem from cross-contact with other grains in oats rather from oats themselves; therefore, an oat-specific RfD would be an inappropriate way of managing the issue.
These recommendations will be used by the FAO to formulate guidance for the food industry and may be used for updating the Codex model code for food labelling.
Source: https://www.food-safety.com/articles/8253-experts-outline-process-for-food-allergen-derivative-exemptions (sorry, I couldn’t find the primary source (the FAO committee report), and think it may not be publicly available yet.
🍏 Read more: Allergens – How Much is Too Much When it Comes to Precautionary Labelling? 🍏
Food Safety News and Resources
Omg, probiotics for prematurely-born infants have been recalled in the USA after “serious adverse reactions”. Oh and by the way, the FDA knew they were illegal! Wow.
All this and more in this week’s not-boring food safety news.
Click the preview box below to access it.
Food Safety News and Resources
How Much Does It Cost To Grow Lettuce (Just for Fun)
If you want to spend 10 minutes nerding out on the financial aspects of lettuce farming – who doesn’t?! – you can’t go past this deep dive into the economics of romaine hearts lettuce cultivation.
Spoiler alert, it costs around US$17,000 per acre to grow Romaine in California. The largest costs are harvest-field packing, rent of land, harvest-cool/palletizing and marketing/sales fees.
Food safety costs, which include a third-party audit and food safety staff members, average $56 per acre per crop. For comparison, disease/insect management is $990 per acre per crop, water is $582 and seed is $473.
Turns out food safety is a bargain!
The video below provides a nice insight into lettuce growing and high-tech harvesting. (Duration: 3:33 minutes). Warning: it will make you want to eat salad.
What you missed in last week’s email
Are cyberattacks (really) a food safety issue?
Ancient pathogens ready to pounce;
How gummy bears are made (just for fun);
Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, horizon scanning and incident reports
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
In this week’s food fraud news:
More than 200 children dead, two years jail time;
Food fraud to blame for lead poisoning recall?;
Fighting fraudulent practices in the agri-food chain (a report);
Anti-corruption bureau investigates food safety officials;
Chocolates and sweets seized.
Lead poisoning in children from (perhaps?) food fraud
Two weeks ago, we reported in our Food Safety News that at least four children in the United States had been affected by lead intoxication from one brand of baby/toddler food containing “extremely high” levels of the heavy metal. (Here’s the original report)
My first thought: perhaps a fraud-affected minor ingredient, like a spice, was contaminated with lead. This could happen if a lead-based
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