124 | Mystery Poisonings | Food Fraud Global Report | Making Bubblegum |

Victims, lawsuits and the food safety team, Daily Harvest more than one year on...

• The Victim and the Food Safety Team, Daily Harvest Mystery Poisonings > 1 year on;

• A Bird’s Eye View of Global Food Fraud;

• Food Safety News and Resources;

• How Bubblegum is (Really) Made;

• Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents

🎧 (New) Listen (now for everyone!) 🎧

Hi,

Welcome to Issue 124, thank you for joining me. And a special huge thank you to new subscribers 👏👏 Chris, Lisa,  Bronwyn, and Carmen👏👏 and renewing subscriber Julie 👏👏 for supporting my work and our food safety community.

I was tickled pink to be mentioned in the famous Food Safety Talk podcast last week for my post about lead in cinnamon. Thank you to the reader who shared it with Don and Ben.

In this week’s issue, I unpack two food fraud papers and dig out the food safety gems, so you don’t have to (you’re welcome!). You’ll also find a review of the Daily Harvest mystery poisonings, more than a year since the FDA’s outbreak investigation team handed off the case, having not published any firm conclusions. Plus a cheeky look at how bubble gum is made.

As always, food fraud news can be found at the end of the email for paying subscribers… it’s a big one this week!

Cheers,

Karen

P.S. Don’t forget to join our first meet-up of 2024 later this week (Thursday or Friday depending on your timezone)

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A Bird’s Eye View of Global Food Fraud

Food fraud insights from the world’s preeminent food fraud database

A significant new food fraud paper was published last week by the team who created and manage the world’s preeminent food fraud database, FoodChainID Food Fraud Database (formerly USP and Decernis Food Fraud Database).

The big takeaway is that food fraud is more dangerous to food consumers than many experts believe.

Notably, a significant proportion of food fraud involves adulterants that are potentially hazardous to consumers. In fact, around half of the adulterants listed in the food fraud database are potentially hazardous and at least one-third of records in the database are for food frauds perpetrated with hazardous adulterants.  In some record types, that figure climbs to almost two-thirds.

While the authors note that hazardous food fraud is likely overrepresented in the database, because it is more likely to be detected and reported, they assert that the data “challenge[s] the common perception that food fraud rarely introduces a safety threat to food systems.”

“These data challenge the common perception that food fraud rarely introduces a safety threat to food systems.” Everstine, et al (2024)

I share more insights from the paper, including which food types are most commonly listed in the database and which have been appearing less frequently in recent times in this week’s food fraud news (for paying subscribers).

The number of records for each fraud type in the Food Fraud Database. Each record could have multiple fraud types and 521 records were excluded due to being classified as “unknown” (N = 6,717). Source: Everstine, et al. (2024)

Find the paper here

Everstine, K.D., Chin, H.B., Lopes, F.A. and Moore, J.C. (2024). Database of Food Fraud Records: Summary of Data from 1980 to 2022. Journal of Food Protection, [online] 87(3), p.100227. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X24000115.

‘Big data’ analysis and food fraud detection

I promised my LinkedIn followers I would unpack a food fraud ‘big data’ research paper last week, because it is a rare example of a quantitative (as opposed to qualitative) examination of food fraud.

The paper, which was presented to the Computer Society’s International Conference on Big Data, features analyses of prices for food products and commodities for a selection of European countries across a 30 month period in 2021 to 2023.

The authors looked for discrepancies between actual and expected food prices and attributed every discrepancy to food fraud. Unsurprisingly, their main conclusion is that there is “significant” food fraud in Europe.  Yup.

A deeper dive can be found in this week’s food fraud news.

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The Victim and the Food Safety Team

Mystery poisoning outbreak in review

Jen Bickerton was working in the food industry, as the director of education for a dietary supplement company, when she became seriously ill after eating Daily Harvest French Lentil and Leek Crumbles in 2022.

Reminder: The Daily Harvest outbreak was caused by a mystery agent, with no pathogens, pesticides or mycotoxins in the products. Hundreds of consumers experienced severe symptoms. The US FDA never publicly identified a definitive cause for the illnesses, and handed the incident from the outbreak investigation team to another, unnamed team in October 2022.

Ms Bickerton suffered digestive symptoms that lasted for days, including horrible heartburn, abdominal pain, extreme fatigue, weakness, body aches, fever, dark urine and intense itching.  She thought she was dying, and visited the emergency room. 

Two weeks after she became sick she got an email from the brand owner of the ‘crumbles’, Daily Harvest, telling her to throw out the product and offering a $10 credit for each bag she had purchased.

Daily Harvest French Lentil + Leek Crumbles sickened hundreds of consumers in 2022.  Image: Jen Bickerton, via Quality Assurance Mag

At last count, 470 people were affected, many of them requiring gall-bladder surgery or liver biopsies.

What went wrong

The “working theory” to explain the outbreak is that a naturally occurring chemical in one of the ingredients caused the adverse reactions, and these were possibly for individuals with specific genetic predispositions.

The food product had been launched just before the illnesses began, in April 2022, and it contained a new ingredient.

The ingredient was tara flour, from the seed pods of the South American tara tree (Tara spinosa). The chemical is an amino acid, baikiain.

Three major nonprotein amino acids found in tara protein flour. From left to right: baikiain, 3-HMT, and 3-HMP. Source: Chittiboyina, A.G., et al. (2023). Is Baikiain in Tara Flour a Causative Agent for the Adverse Events Associated with the Recalled Frozen French Lentil & Leek Crumbles Food Product? - A Working Hypothesis.

Tara flour had not been used in foods in the USA before and Daily Harvest relied on the assurances of its supplier that it was widely eaten in Peru and was generally recognised as safe (GRAS).

🍏 Mystery Toxin Solved? Issue 92, June 2023 🍏

What happened next

Daily Harvest was accused of acting in poor faith after reports of illnesses began to surface. Victims allege that the company deleted social media comments in which people complained of symptoms instead of investigating; promised to pay medical bills but reneged on those promises; and forced customers to sign arbitration agreements preventing them from taking legal action. (source)

Daily Harvest and its suppliers are being sued by more than 300 consumers and damages could exceed $75 million.

The company’s revenue dropped by thirty-three percent in the year following the outbreak, according to Fast Company, though these figures are disputed by Daily Harvest.  Two rounds of layoffs followed the outbreak and ensuing media storm.

The food safety team

A media report from 2023, by Fast Company, claims that the food safety assessment of tara flour was conducted by a man called Ricky Silver. He had joined Daily Harvest in 2018, having worked at Vita Coco and Pepsico, and was chief supply chain officer in 2022.

Silver told Fast Company that Daily Harvest followed “internal safety checks” to evaluate the flour before using it.  These checks included checking for allergens; seeing whether the supplier’s facility was FDA registered; checking for risks of chemicals or foreign bodies and checking to see if the product was GRAS.

Daily Harvest’s supplier, Smirk’s, confirmed that tara flour was GRAS, said Silver. “The supplier shared with us documentation and positioned [tara flour] as Generally Recognized as Safe.” Daily Harvest is suing the company that supplied the tara flour and its supplier in Peru.

In his interview with Fast Company about the incident, Silver said that tara pods were consumed “as a part of the staple diet” in Peru and that any health effects in North American consumers were due to a genetic predisposition.  This was countered by another Fast Company interviewee, Maricel Maffini, a food policy and food safety expert, who explained they couldn’t find any evidence that tara flour was a staple food in Peru.

Daily Harvest has changed its food safety assessment process for new ingredients and now pays more attention to the history of usage, instead of relying on supplier assurances.

What happens to food safety team members when things go wrong?

In the USA, a major disincentive for food companies to produce unsafe food is the threat of civil litigation from consumers and customers - that is, the threat of being sued. However, companies and their employees are sometimes prosecuted for their roles in food poisoning outbreaks.

For example, the Quality Assurance Manager at Peanut Corporation of America was sentenced to five years in jail for her role in the 2008-2009 Salmonella outbreak which has been described as “one of the most massive and lethal food-borne contamination events in U.S. history”.

Peanut Corporation of America shut down after their Salmonella outbreak, but Daily Harvest has continued to trade, even launching new products since the poisonings. Order value per customer is up and a deal with a national grocery store chain is apparently imminent (source).

As for Ricky Silver, his career doesn’t seem to have suffered. In fact, he has been promoted and is now CEO of the company, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The victims

Almost two years after eating the tainted Daily Harvest crumbles, Ms Bickerton still experiences abdominal pains that she worries are a sign of long-term liver damage. Other consumers report ongoing food anxiety after being sickened in the outbreak.

Takeaways

This incident is a potent reminder of just how reliant consumers are on food manufacturers to keep them safe.  Food manufacturers who can’t or don’t want to make safe food can – and do – injure, sicken and kill the people who eat their wares.

It’s also a potent lesson for food company executives about how NOT to handle complaints and a reminder to invest in top-quality technical resources – and by that I mean expert food scientists. Those who don’t are putting their consumers in danger, and their brands at risk.

In short: 🍏 Four hundred and seventy people were harmed after eating a new food product that contained a new ingredient 🍏 Scientists worked to find a probable cause for the illnesses, while the key regulatory agency offered no definite cause 🍏 The food company initially suffered financial setbacks and is involved in legal action with its customers and suppliers 🍏 However, it is still trading and has since launched new products 🍏 An employee linked to the food safety risk assessment of the possibly poisonous ingredient has been promoted to company CEO 🍏 Victims continue to suffer long-term effects, including pain and food-anxiety 🍏

Main sources:

Delicious But Poisonous: An Industry Insider Becomes a Food Poisoning Victim - (qualityassurancemag.com)

Daily Harvest’s toxic tara flour ingredient sent customers to the ER (fastcompany.com)

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Food Safety News and Resources

Our food safety news and resources roundups are always free and never boring.

This week’s highlight (low light): Huge estimated victim count in the (now finished) Salmonella cantaloupe outbreak.

Click the preview box below to access it.

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Bubblegum, How it’s Actually Made (Just for Fun)

Ever seen a bubble gum-making machine? 

This video showcases some equipment in need of a serious deep clean.  And has a moderately cheeky narration that is not entirely safe for work.

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What you missed in last week’s email

• Save the date: Meet-up on Thursday 8th Feb (Friday for AU, NZ);

• What’s Coming for The Rotten Apple for 2024 - a podcast, more meetups and…;

• Packaging Corner;

• Case study: Tiramisu Allergen Death - What Went Wrong?

• An important letter from the US embassy;

• Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents

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Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, horizon scanning and incident reports

📌 Food Fraud News 📌

An unforeseen consequence for anti-fraud rules in organic foods

European rules aimed at reducing fraud in organic food at the retail level have caused headaches