Issue #40 2022-05-30

Food protectionism, how to reduce the carbon footprint of your operations, bad choices and jail time for food safety professionals, 3D printed chocolate

Welcome to The Rotten Apple, an inside view of food integrity for professionals, policy-makers and purveyors. Subscribe for weekly insights, latest news and emerging trends in food safety, food authenticity and sustainable supply chains.

• What is food protectionism and why should we care?

• How to reduce the carbon footprint of your operations

• When food safety choices are criminally bad (a case study)

• Just for fun; 3D-printed chocolate

• Food fraud incidents and horizon scanning updates from the past week

🎧 On the go? Listen to me read out today’s email. Get access to audio with a free trial subscription, at the bottom of this email 🎧

Hi,

Welcome to Issue 40 of The Rotten Apple. Can you believe it is almost June?!

A massive hello to all you wonderful new paying subscribers. Your faith in me and what I do just makes my day! And it helps ensure the continuation of this newsletter. Thank you.

Food protectionism is all over the news this week. For food professionals like you and me, it makes our jobs harder, by contributing to overall food trade problems and price instability. For residents of earth, it’s a probable contributor to famines and political upheavals. Depressing.

For some good news, this issue has a list of things you can do in your commercial kitchen or boutique food production facility that will make our planet better, help your bottom line and make your customers happy.

Also this week, lessons learned from bad food safety choices plus 3D printed chocolate. As always, this issue ends with food fraud incidents and horizon scanning news, which is now behind a paywall, along with an audio version for your listening pleasure. 

Enjoy,

Karen

P.S. If you’re not already a subscriber, you should definitely subscribe now.

Cover image: Petr Sevcovic on Unsplash

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Food Supply Chains

What is food protectionism and why should we care?

India has stopped exporting wheat. Indonesia banned the export of palm oil in April.  Argentina banned the export of soybean oil and soybean meal.  Egypt has banned the export of many staple foods including vegetable oil, maize, wheat, flour, lentils, beans and pasta. This is food protectionism.

Food protectionism occurs when governments block or change the rules for the trading of food.  Right now it’s happening across the globe as governments try to protect their own citizens from food shortages and too-high food prices.

Food protectionist policies are believed by economists to be relatively ineffective at protecting local food systems while also being extremely detrimental to international food markets.  For example, in Malaysia, which will ban chicken exports this week, farmers and exporters risk losing their main export market, Singapore, which will no doubt find other sources for chicken.  In Indonesia, the export ban last month did have the desired effect, a drop in the cost of oil for citizens.  However, local oil producers, who contribute significant income to the country’s economy, were suffering too.  The potential loss of overseas markets for Indonesian oil might have proved more detrimental to the country in the long term and so the export ban was lifted.

Arguably, the worst outcome of food protectionism is its contribution to food insecurity in Africa, which imports around 85% of its food. Further upheavals to food supply chains could result in widespread famine and political unrest.

For food professionals, the challenges lie in finding reliable sources of ingredients that are safe and free from food fraud, while the global food supply environment seems to be becoming more difficult to navigate every day.  In next week’s newsletter, I will write about approved supplier programs and how to build one by following current best practices.

In short: 🍏 Food protectionism is happening as governments try to protect their own citizens from food shortages and too-high food prices 🍏 Widespread famine and political unrest may result 🍏

Sources:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/countries-banning-food-exports-amid-rising-prices-inflation.html

https://fortune.com/2022/05/28/food-protectionism-price-shortage-pandemic-ukraine/

Sustainable Food

How to reduce the carbon footprint of your commercial kitchen or boutique food production company

Food systems contribute around 29% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  You can help.

Why?  Apart from the obvious save-the-planet reasons, there are sound commercial reasons for reducing emissions.  Consumers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for sustainability, with up to 50% of consumers saying they will pay around 15% more for sustainable products. Avoiding unsustainable products is also now a thing. As of last year, according to Deloitte, almost 30% of people had stopped purchasing certain brands or products because of ethical or sustainability concerns.  Being able to make claims about your sustainable practices is going to help your bottom line.  And it will save you money.

The list I’m about to share is all pretty obvious, and you may have already considered many of these factors in your daily operations.  But I still think it’s worth putting them all together in a list, and there are some new technologies that you might not have heard about.  I’ve also included information about which activities can have the biggest impact, with the least amount of effort.

1.      If you want to make public claims about your carbon emission reductions or green credentials, you should estimate your current emissions first to establish a baseline.  There are tools and standard measurement methods for this, including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and Net Zero Now (links are below).  

2.      Switch to renewable energy, by changing energy tariffs or energy providers.  This is the easiest way to make a big reduction, with hospitability venues in the United Kingdom able to reduce their emissions by 10% with this single action.

3.      Improve energy efficiencies in daily staff activities with the following:

a.      Train staff to choose the right heating ring for the correct pot, use lids to prevent heat escape from pots and not to leave gas hobs burning when not in use.

b.      Operate dishwashers and laundry washers on the most efficient cycles.    

c.      Put combi ovens into idle mode when not in use - ideally program them to do this automatically. 

d.      Make use of dataloggers to optimise heating and cooling processes.  Monitor and control refrigeration systems with smart tech.

e.       Use lower energy cook methods like sous vide.

4.      Choose better equipment, fixtures and fittings for energy efficiency gains.

a.      Use electric vehicles for deliveries and pickups.

b.      Instal a smart meter to check energy usage and energy management technology on cool rooms and freezers. 

A large pub group in the UK managed to save 30% of their cellar cooling energy by using tech that switches coolers on and off based on beer temperatures rather than air temperatures. 

c.      Switch to LED lighting instead of energy-intensive halogens.  One UK company reduced their energy consumption by 13% by switching to LED and adding motion detectors. 

d.      Change heating systems to more energy-efficient technologies, increase insulation and install double-glazing.

e.      When building new buildings, or fitting out new areas, make use of materials that are sustainable or recycled. 

McDonalds has committed to using only furniture made from recycled or certified materials in its stores from 2023.  

f.       Switch from gas hobs which can be left running continuously to induction stovetops that only use energy when a pot is on the stove. 

g.      Swap walk-in cooling spaces for self-contained drawers or chests. 

h.      Choose new equipment based on whole-of-life cost.  These may be more expensive up front but cheaper to run and more energy efficient over the life of the equipment.

i.       Make use of automatically controlled ventilation systems in kitchens.  These slow down fans when there is no cooking being done. 

5.      Reduce food waste.  Food waste accounts for 23% of total food system emissions in wealthy countries like the United Kingdom. 

a.      Plan ingredient ordering and production carefully so production meets demand.

b.      Make use of ordering apps to purchase the right amount of ingredients. Pre-ordering apps can also be used in hospitality so chefs know in advance what their guests want to eat.

c.      Make use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for waste monitoring and management, such as LeanPath and Chefs Eye, which can measure how much food and what types of food are being thrown away.

d.      Design menus to make use of offcuts and surpluses. 

e.      Give away unused, edible food to redistribution organisations. 

f.       Reduce portion sizes, so less is leftover on diners’ plates. 

g.      Offer doggy bags so diners can take home leftovers. 

h.      Streamline offerings on menus so it is easier to order and anticipate demand. 

i.       Put less food out at one time on a buffet.

j.       Make use of humidity controls in modern fridges to maintain the quality of fresh fruit and veg for longer.

6.      Offer and sell more lower-emission foods.

a.      Meat-based foods are generally considered to create more emissions than plant-based foods, so reducing the number of meat foods on offer can reduce your overall emissions.

b.      Foods grown using regenerative agriculture can also assist. 

Compass food company is aiming to use foods grown with regenerative agriculture principles for 70% of its top five food categories by 2030.

c.      Buy local to reduce food miles or even grow veg on site. 

d.      Buy surpluses or ‘ugly’ foods that would otherwise go to waste.

7.      Upcycle.  Make condiments from surplus foods, and partner with other businesses who can make use of your waste, such as local gardens that may collect coffee grounds for composting.

In short: 🍏 Reducing your operation’s carbon emissions will make your customers and investors happy and can save you money 🍏 The easiest big gain can come from switching to a renewable energy provider or tariff 🍏 Don’t forget to measure a baseline first if you are going to make emissions reduction claims 🍏

🍏 This list was inspired by a report by Meiko: https://www.meiko-uk.co.uk/en/footprint-carbon-report 🍏

The greenhouse gas protocol: https://ghgprotocol.org/

Net Zero Now: https://netzeronow.org/

Source for consumers being willing to pay a premium: https://www.euromonitor.com/article/sustainable-food-will-consumers-pay-a-premium

Food Fraud

When food safety choices turn criminal

As food professionals, we all have hard choices to make at work.  Food safety managers and quality assurance managers are frequently forced to make difficult decisions about what to do with foods that have a potential safety problem, but that management doesn’t want to discard for financial reasons.  The pressure of keeping a job, while protecting consumer safety and keeping senior managers and business owners satisfied with profits can be huge.

Here's the story of a business where food safety professionals and senior management made some pretty terrible choices.  Court cases are STILL happening in relation to these choices, fourteen years after they were made.

This happened in a large food company, which, at the time, was manufacturing roughly 2.5% of processed peanuts in the United States.

In 2008, a series of really bad choices were made at the company, the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), which caused a massive Salmonella outbreak which extended into 2009. Nine people died and at least 714 people, half of them children, were sickened.

A recall began.  It was big.  The PCA was supplying peanuts, peanut pieces, peanut butters and other processed peanut ingredients to hundreds of food manufacturers and suppliers.  Their products were in thousands of foods, from breakfast cereals to confectionary. 

The recall was the biggest recall that had ever happened in the USA at that time, and involved 46 states, more than 360 other food companies, and more than 3,900 different products.

Poor choices were made.  Management at PCA knew that their products regularly and frequently contained Salmonella. And they had known it for at least 2 years. 

There was a long history of food quality and food safety issues at their two sites in two different states.  They had received complaints about the cleanliness and sanitation standards at their sites.  They had been sued by customers, including a confectionery company, over aflatoxin contamination at least two times.  An auditor working for Nestle reported that their site was unsatisfactory for 40 different inspection criteria in 2006. 

The sites were described as filthy, with reports of food safety disasters like bird excrement washing into a factory from water leaking through a roof. A former worker later said he had repeatedly complained about such sanitation problems to the company owner who would not authorise spending on repairs.  

With factories like that, it’s no wonder that lab tests of products found Salmonella.  The company got so many failed lab results that they stopped using external labs.  They shipped product they knew was contaminated; they refused to share test results with customers and they faked test results.  They hid one of their plants from the US FDA, which was responsible for inspecting it for food safety compliance.  At the other site, they concealed some of their processing activities from the FDA, including the high-risk process of making peanut butter. 

Who made these choices?  

Who chose to conceal such obvious food safety risks from customers and regulators?  Investigations by the FBI and the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations resulted in the company’s owner, his brother and two plant managers being indicted. The quality assurance manager was also charged.

Why? 

Why choose to supply food that was known to be dangerous?  Were they ignorant of the risks, or did they just not care?  For the judge who presided over the criminal sentencing, the motive was clear.  He said,

“these acts were driven by profit and the protection of profit… thus greed”.

The fallout

The company was soon bankrupt.  There were huge flow-on effects to the entire North American peanut industry, with losses estimated to be $1 billion dollars.  As well as criminal court cases, there were and are multiple civil lawsuits. The owner of the company was sentenced to 28 years in prison, his brother to 20 years and the quality assurance manager to five years.  The plant managers got three years and six years each.

Lessons

🍏 Vendor approvals systems matter.  Understanding the food safety and food fraud risks from your suppliers is important so that you can reduce those risks.  Nestle sent their own auditor to PCA, gave the site a “Does Not Meet Standards” result and (presumably) stopped purchasing from there.  Other companies didn’t do that due diligence and were caught up in the recall.

🍏 Background checks matter.  An industry insider who was interviewed by The Washington Post during the recall said that “everybody in the peanut industry” knew that there were serious sanitation problems at PCA and that it was “a time bomb waiting to go off”.  The US FDA had found mould, evidence of rodent infestation and live birds during an inspection before the recall.  There was also a history of food-safety related civil cases against the company from former customers. These would have raised red flags in a background check for food fraud.

🍏 Whistleblower systems matter.  While there was no whistleblowing in this case, workers at PCA knew there were serious problems.  After the recall, workers told media outlets that the plants were “filthy” and that they would never eat the peanut butter or let their children eat it.  If there had been a secure, anonymous whistleblowing system, the workers would perhaps have reported these problems, which might have prevented the outbreak and deaths. 

🍏 Prosecutions, prison time and lawsuits are a risk to professionals who make bad choices. The United States justice system can and will investigate and prosecute food safety breaches, and punish individuals as well as companies. One state food authority even threatened to pursue manslaughter charges if federal authorities did not begin criminal investigations. Serious prison time and the loss of assets resulted from these individuals’ choices.

Sources: various, most can be accessed via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_Corporation_of_America

Just for Fun

3D printed chocolate

Scientists have printed chocolate into intricate shapes using 3D printing techniques.  Panellists who tasted the results preferred printed shapes that were more intricate because of the extra “crack” they imparted when the chocolate was bitten.

Watch a video of the printed chocolate shattering here:

Read the full research article here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/SM/D1SM01761F

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/have-scientists-designed-the-perfect-chocolate-180980062/

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Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud incident reports, horizon scanning updates, plus an awesome audio version (so you can give your eyeballs a rest!) … Check out an example to see how the email looks (and sounds) for paying subscribers here.