120 | Heavy Metal Takeaways | King Canute in Food Safety | $5m Food 'Fraud' |
120 | Heavy Metal Takeaways | King Canute in Food Safety | $5m Food 'Fraud' |
Plus, furry chocolate croissants and a reader survey request
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Cinnamon lead levels (big scary numbers, plus takeaways for food professionals)
Verification versus validation: a quick primer with King Canute
Food safety news and resources
Chocolate croissant pug
Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents
Welcome to 2024 with The Rotten Apple. This will be my third year as a newsletter publisher… how time flies!
The big news this week is (again*) related to the lead-apple-cinnamon issue, with test results published by the US FDA just after Christmas. Heavy metal concentrations are even higher than expected. I share a visual representation of the concentrations (scary), and explain what I’ll be doing differently in food fraud work in response to this incident.
Also this week: a medieval king explains validation versus verification, plus food safety news from around the globe and food fraud news for paying subscribers.
Thank you to everyone who 👏 renewed their subscriptions👏 over the break. I couldn’t do this without you and your support is very much appreciated.
Later this week I’ll be emailing a reader survey, to help plan 2024 for this publication, the premier** ad-free food safety newsletter in the world. Please take a moment to do it.
Karen
* Promise I’ll take a break from the cinnamon-lead thing for a while after this week.
** “Premier”, or only? ad-free food safety newsletter 😀
Reader Survey
I’ll be emailing a reader survey later this week, with the results used to inform future content and improve the experience for everyone. Please take a moment to respond (promise I’ll keep it brief). Thanks!
Cinnamon Lead Levels (Big Scary Numbers)
Plus takeaways for food professionals
Note: this post was updated on 24 Jan 2024 to correct an error about the concentration of lead found in cinnamon applesauce sample(s)
Just after Christmas, the US FDA shared the results of their tests for lead in the cinnamon used in recalled cinnamon-apple puree products.
Reminder: The recall was initiated after four children were found to have elevated lead levels during routine blood tests. The number of people now known to be affected has climbed to more than 200.
The FDA also confirmed the cinnamon contains extremely high levels of chromate, probably due to adulteration with lead chromate. This confirms the insider intel I shared in Issue 118.
Big (scary) numbers
The FDA found lead at up to 5,110 parts per million (ppm) in one sample of the cinnamon, and 2,270 ppm in another.
If five thousand parts per million doesn’t sound like a lot, note that it is more than two thousand times higher than the ‘safety’ limit proposed for cinnamon by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
The figures below provide a graphical representation of the amount of contamination. The image on the left shows 5,110 ppm, the amount of lead found in one sample of the contaminated cinnamon - five squares of the 32 x 32 grid. The image on the right represents the maximum amount of lead allowed in cinnamon: less than one pixel on your screen.
A global or local problem?
We now have more information about how much cinnamon, globally, could be affected by these high levels of adulteration. Fortunately, the news is good.
The FDA press release implies that the Ecuadorian cinnamon supplier Negasmart, which supplied the cinnamon used in the recalled products, could have been duped by their supplier, which is also in Ecuador.
It states that testing by local authorities has not revealed high lead levels in raw or unprocessed cinnamon from other cinnamon importers in Ecuador, finding only Negasmart cinnamon to be contaminated and adding “The Ecuadorian processor used by Negasmart is not currently operating”.
Reading between the lines, it seems the Ecuadorian authorities suspect that Negasmart’s supplier is responsible for the adulteration and that other cinnamon supply chains are unaffected.
Not just lead: chromium too
In addition to lead, the cinnamon and the recalled food products were also tested for other heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium and chromium, with the results now publicly available. The cinnamon and finished products contained dangerously high levels of chromium, but not of arsenic or cadmium.
Two samples of cinnamon contained 1,201 ppm and 531 ppm of chromium, respectively, while the finished products contained 0.590 and 0.566 ppm.
Takeaways for food professionals
Lead chromate has been used to adulterate spices for food fraud purposes in multiple separate incidents and over many years. In 2019, Bangladeshi spice traders told researchers they deliberately added lead chromate to make their turmeric look better, not realising such treatments were harming their children and workers, as well as being illegal. They learned to do this from Indian spice traders, who also sold them the lead chromate, which is used as an industrial colourant in India.
Lead chromate does not only change the colour of spices, but makes them heavier, so traders can get more money for each lot. It varies in colour from pale brown to intense oranges and crimson.
Should the apple puree manufacturer have identified lead chromate adulteration as a food fraud vulnerability for cinnamon in their food safety system? Perhaps. However, with few, if any, published previous incidences of lead chromate in cinnamon, such a vulnerability would have been easy to miss.
Should all food companies now consider all powdered spices at risk of lead chromate adulteration? Yes. Whether that’s a significant vulnerability requiring extra mitigations or not depends on each company’s supply chain.
For me, I’ll be recommending all my clients conduct heavy metal analysis at least once per year on all powdered spices no matter how secure their supply chains appear.
I also recommend all companies that purchase cinnamon review their food fraud vulnerability assessments and include lead chromate in light of this new information. Just because this was an (apparently) isolated incident doesn’t mean that some other spice supplier won’t try it again in another country at another time.
In short: 🍏 Test results for contaminated cinnamon have been published by the US FDA, with lead found at levels more than two thousand times higher than ‘safe’ limits 🍏 It appears that just one supply chain was affected, with the contamination suspected of occurring in Ecuador 🍏 Chromium was also found at high levels, and this supports the popular hypothesis that the cinnamon was adulterated with lead chromate, an industrial colourant, for the purposes of economic gain (‘food fraud’) 🍏 Food fraud vulnerability assessments for cinnamon and other powdered spices should be reviewed, and annual heavy metal testing on all spices considered 🍏
Source: US FDA Investigation of Elevated Lead Levels: Cinnamon Applesauce Pouches
Verification versus Validation
A quick primer
Two pillars of food safety programs are verification and validation.
What’s the difference, and how do you remember which is which?
Put simply, verification is checking that something is being done as described in written procedures. For example, is the specified temperature reached during cooking?
Validation is checking that the procedures and processes are suitable to deliver the required results. For example, does a cook temp of 82 degrees kill pathogens?
Verification happens all the time in food companies that operate formal food safety systems… think recording temperatures, signing off cleaning operations and checking sanitiser concentrations.
Validation is performed only rarely, when food safety systems are set up, reviewed or amended. Challenge testing for Listeria survival in a new product, or reviewing literature for correct chlorine concentrations in wash water are examples.
How to remember, using the King Canute story
Remember the difference between verification and validation using a famous story about King Canute (or Cnut the Great), a medieval leader of England, Denmark and Norway.
King Canute is sitting on his throne by the sea, commanding the tide not to come in and wet his feet.
Verification: The king is on his throne, talking to the sea. The procedure is being followed.
Validation: The procedure is not working, the sea advances with the tide.
Oops
I’ve been using the King Canute anecdote to explain verification versus validation for years. Funny thing, though, I just found out that according to the original telling of the story, King Canute was not an arrogant, ignorant man who believed he could tame nature, but a wise leader who wanted to demonstrate his humility to his courtiers. Oops.
Food Safety News and Resources
Our news and resources section includes not-boring food safety news plus links to free training sessions, webinars and guidance documents.
This week’s lowlight: STEC in hard cheese kills 1 and sickens 29 others
Click the preview box below to access it.
Chocolate Croissant Pug (Just for Fun)
This snack is perfect if you made a New Year’s resolution to gain weight. Woof.
Thank you to @messedupfoods on X for this hairy pastry image.
What you missed in our last issue
A little bit fishy… (gift for you)
52 Things I Learned in 2023
LinkedIn Training: Recording now available to watch on demand
Chickpea sorting insights
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, horizon scanning and incident reports
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
Is this a $5 million food fraud?
A person is suing The Hershey Company in the USA for $5 million over an allegedly misleading product.
The plaintiff claims the confectionery
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