Issue #12 2021-11-01
Stay on top of food integrity news
Halloween sweets can be scary
Four decades of suffering for food fraud victims
Heavy metals in baby foods, part 2 (What’s being done)
A weird new health risk from micro contamination?
Food fraud incidents and horizon scanning updates from the past week
Hi,
Happy Halloween, if you’re into that kind of thing. Halloween seemed a good time to talk about the growing number of poisonings from kids accidentally eating cannabis edibles. Check out the picture of the candies that landed a bunch of Vietnamese school students in hospital last week!
Also this week; more on the rice/arsenic baby food scandal and a forty-year follow up of food fraud victims from Spain. Plus, an unusual recall due to deadly micro contamination had me turning to Google to learn more about Burkholderia pseudomallei.
As always, this issue ends with a list of food fraud incidents from the past week.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week.
Karen
P.S. Don’t forget to share this with your network (sharing really helps me get the word out)
Food Safety
Cannabis edibles and food poisoning
Halloween: lots of kids in many countries eating heaps of sweets and candy (or ‘lollies’, as we call them in Australia). Unfortunately, cannabis edibles that take the form of candies, sweets or jellies are increasingly being linked to poisoning of kids and teenagers.
Cannabis edibles, which are foods and drinks that intentionally contain psychoactives, have been the cause of multiple overdoses in children and teenagers and its thought the risks are increasing.
There are risks to people who unknowingly consume the edibles, thinking they are eating ordinary sweets, and also to people who know they are taking a psychoactive substance through accidental overdose. The risk of overdose is heightened due to the long onset of effect – at least 30 minutes – which leads people to think their initial dose is not working.
Last week, 13 teenagers in Vietnam became seriously ill during school lessons after sharing sweets from a pack their classmate purchased at a café. Although the pack looked just like an ordinary, brightly coloured sweet package, closer inspection found it was labelled ‘Medicated nerds’ and declared it contained the cannabis-derived psychoactive agent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The Irish Medical Journal recently described four cases of very young children who had eaten cannabis edibles. They note that the packaging of such products is often ‘attractive’ and not childproof. Cannabis edibles are illegal in both Vietnam and Ireland.
Lessons: Expect pressure on food enforcement agencies to take (more) action against illegal cannabis edibles. In jurisdictions where cannabis edibles are legal there may be growing pressure to further tighten restrictions on packaging to reduce the risks to children.
In short: 🍏 Cannabis edibles are causing accidental poisoning 🍏 Expect more enforcement and stricter rules 🍏 Take care when using cannabis edibles near children
Sources:
https://imj.ie/edible-cannabis-toxicity-in-young-children-an-emergent-serious-public-health-threat/
Food Fraud
Decades of suffering for food fraud victims
What happens when you get eat fraudulent food? Usually nothing. But sometimes very bad things. And sometimes for a very long time….
By definition, food fraud is motivated by financial incentives, rather than a desire to harm people. However, food fraud can present significant dangers to consumers. The most famous example is a series of incidents that occurred in 2008 and that have come to be known as the melamine baby milk scandal.
Food fraud perpetrators had been adding the industrial chemical melamine to milk powder to boost its apparent protein content, probably for years. Milk powder with more protein can be sold for a higher price. The adulterated powder was used to make baby formula in China.
Melamine causes kidney damage. As a result of drinking the tainted formula, more than three hundred thousand babies (yes, that’s 300,000!) were injured and at least six died. While most babies recovered from their kidney injuries, at least one researcher (source below) is concerned about the longer term outcomes on the victims because melamine is a carcinogen and able to induce urinary tract tumours.
This year marks forty years since another famous (infamous) food fraud incident. In 1981 tens of thousands of people in Spain began suffering from a mystery illness. The illness was deadly and doctors were perplexed about its cause. By the time its source was traced, hundreds of people had died. The source was a batch of rapeseed oil that had been intended for industrial use but had instead been illegally refined with aniline and then sold as ‘olive oil’ to unsuspecting consumers.
Forty years later, the victims – at least those who didn’t die – are still suffering from the after-effects of the poisoning. Their symptoms range from lung injuries to limb deformation and many were crippled for life. A group of victims were protesting last week in Madrid, demanding a meeting with the Prime Minister and asking for help with their ongoing medical expenses. These are victims of food fraud, and they have been suffering for decades.
If you needed another reason to try to protect your consumers from food fraud, these horrible, avoidable, chronic health outcomes should be reason enough.
In short: 🍏 Fraudulently adulterated food can cause serious injury, illness and death 🍏 The effects on consumers can last for decades 🍏 Yet another reason to fight against food fraud 🍏
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27702712/
Food Safety
Heavy Metals in Baby Foods, Part 2 (What’s being done?)
Last week I reported on the slow-motion train wreck of premium baby food brands in the USA repeatedly failing to control the hazards from naturally occurring heavy metals, including arsenic in their products.
This week: what is being done about it?
Legal limits for baby food are being changed. The current rules for heavy metals in baby food are “dangerously-high”, according to the US House of Representatives Sub-Committee who has been investigating the issues.
Unfortunately, the changes are happening slowly. The FDA won’t be releasing draft new levels for arsenic in baby food until April 2022 at the earliest, and the rules won’t be finalised until some time after April 2024. Other metals, like cadmium and mercury, won’t have new levels drafted until 2024. Implementation won’t be until after 2026.
In addition to calling on speedier changes to legal limits, the Sub-Committee also calls on manufacturers to ‘phase out’ problematic ingredients, especially rice. Think about that for a moment! Phase out rice?! Rice cereals are the most common first solid food for babies in the USA (source, as always, is below).
Rice cereals are hypoallergenic, ‘easy-to-digest’ and well-tolerated by babies transitioning to solids. Alternatives such as oats, quinoa and barley have been suggested, however rice is popular, well-established and cheap. It’s going to be quite a task to encourage food companies to stop using it as an ingredient. And an even bigger task to tell parents they can’t have rice for their infants’ first food.
Thirdly, the Sub-Committee recommends that the FDA should mandate finished product testing. They noted – with barely disguised horror – that most baby food companies perform finished product testing for heavy metals rarely, if at all.
There’s a good reason for that: preventive controls. In the USA (as in most other countries), food manufacturers are required by law to manufacture food using systems to prevent risks. If those systems are created and implemented properly, the finished products don’t need to be tested frequently. In fact, that’s the whole point of preventive controls.
So what’s going wrong? At least five brands were named in the September 2021 report, including market-leading, premium brands and smaller boutique brands. So there seems to be a wide-spread problem with preventive controls for heavy metals across the industry. Or, perhaps there is something else going on?
Next week: Are preventive controls enough?
In short: 🍏 Baby foods in the USA contain too much naturally occurring heavy metals, including arsenic 🍏 The government is calling for the FDA to revise the legal limits for heavy metals more quickly than the current plan 🍏 They are asking manufacturers to ‘phase out’ rice as an ingredient in baby foods 🍏 They are calling for mandatory finished product testing 🍏
Consumer Product Safety
Unusual health risk from micro contamination
Here’s a recall that caught my eye last week. It’s a reminder that we aren’t always aware of all the potential hazards in our products.
An aromatherapy room spray caused illnesses and deaths in the USA because it was contaminated with a bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei that causes lung disease and wound infections as well as inflammation of the brain.
Humans are usually infected with B. pseudomallei through contact with ‘polluted water’. Makes you wonder what was happening in the factories that made the aromatherapy sprays!
Is this bacterium a food safety risk? Yes. According to the CDC, it can cause infection in people through ingestion of contaminated water and ingestion of soil-contaminated food as well as tropical freshwater fish.
In short: 🍏 It’s not just food that presents microbial hazards to consumers 🍏 A bacterium that caused illness and deaths from a room spray can also be transmitted through food 🍏
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/melioidosis/transmission/index.html
Food Fraud Incidents and Horizon Scanning
Food fraud incidents added to Food Fraud Risk Information Database in the past week
A company and its director have been fined for illegally importing meat, seafood, fresh produce and processed foods. The imports occurred without proper licenses and permits. The foods may have been from non-accredited sources that did not comply with food safety standards of the destination country - Singapore https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/importer-director-fined-over-illegal-imports-of-meat-seafood-and-other-food
Authorities in Hong Kong have seized almost US$200K worth of contraband hairy crabs that were concealed in a shipment of legitimate goods being imported from China. The crabs were being smuggled, they also lacked health certificates - Hong Kong https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3153510/pinched-hong-kong-authorities-arrest-truck-driver-over
Frozen meat without proper documentation and being smuggled across the border has been found by authorities - Hong Kong https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3153510/pinched-hong-kong-authorities-arrest-truck-driver-over
Food fraud horizon scanning (other updates to the Food Fraud Risk Information Database in the past week)
Nothing added this week.