Issue #71 | May Contain Traces Of... | Sustainable Food x 3 | Peanut Butter Diamonds |

2023-01-16

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.

• Sustainable food production - 3 short notes

• Allergen precautionary labelling - FAO’s recommendations

• How to Make Diamonds with Peanut Butter (Just for Fun)

• News and Resources Roundup

• Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Issue 71 of The Rotten Apple. If you’re new here, thank you for joining us. I do the hard work for you, by scouring food safety news from all over the world every week, to bring you only the most focused, relevant and interesting.

This week I have three short notes on the topic of sustainable food production, plus excellent allergen updates from the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Sustainable systems form an important part of “food integrity”, at least as far as I am concerned. Food integrity is the intersection of food that is safe, authentic (i.e. no food fraud), and produced in a way that is not too damaging to planet earth.

In every issue, you can find a link to our monthly food safety news and resources. It’s updated each week with food safety news that is unusual, or an example of a possible emerging new risk or is very high impact - the aim is to educate about new hazards and new food safety scenarios, not to list every food safety incident from every country every week. The food safety news and resources posts also have links to free resources like webinars and guidance documents.

This week’s news post contains news about very high levels of mycotoxin in pet food that injured hundreds of cats.

Good to know: There is no sponsored or paid content in the news posts, I only include links to resources that I genuinely believe are valuable and helpful.

Food fraud news, incidents and horizon scanning can be found at the end of every email, for paying subscribers. There’s also a human-friendly 🎧 audio version, so you can listen instead of reading (and enjoy my Aussie accent 😏).

Have a great week,

Karen

P.S. Keeping these newsletters independent and ad-free is hard work! Without ads, we rely on subscription fees to keep this publication alive. If you are not already a paying subscriber, please consider purchasing a paid subscription today. You’ll get access to extra features like indexed posts, downloadable past issues and monthly supplements. And you will feel warm and fuzzy knowing you are supporting independent, high-quality content.

Cover image: Allergens by Landon Arnold on Unsplash

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Sustainable Food Production 2023

Are high-density, high-rise farms the future of sustainable food?

Companies in China are building sky-scrapers for high-intensity farming. The first of these was built in response to the 2019 outbreak of swine flu. The buildings allow for very tight biological controls, with ventilation, incoming feed and even human workers closely managed to prevent the ingress of pathogens.

Pork is the most popular protein in China and the country consumes more than half of the world’s pork. With its large and growing urban population, high-rise pork farms allow for meat production close to population centres.

This story in The Guardian showcases a 26-storey pig skyscraper which will produce 1 million pigs per year.

Image: handout, via The Guardian, used under fair use licensing

The purported environmental benefits of high-rise farms are due to savings in land use, efficiencies in production and a reduction in transport distances for feed and pigs.

More: https://www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2022-10-22/2506762.html

Busting the food miles myth

Food miles are much less important to the overall greenhouse gas emissions of a meal than the type of food that is being eaten.  Way less important.   

This was the subject of a conversation Russ Roberts of EconTalk had with environmentalist and head of research at Our World in Data Hannah Ritchie. 

In addition to the insights on food miles - a highly recommended read/listen - Ms Richie shares the surprising statistic that more than half of young people surveyed in ten countries, both wealthy and poor, think that the human race is doomed due to climate change.  Doomed.  Done for.  It’s not only pessimistic but it allows these young people to feel powerless, like nothing they do will make a difference, which ultimately prevents them from changing their behaviours to support the planet 😥.

Read the transcript or listen to the recording here. Links to sources are included.

An Unhelpful Focus on Protein

Everyone’s talking about how hungry people around the globe need more protein.  Many sustainability assessments for production systems consider the number of grams of protein produced per input, such as energy. But according to a new report, that is simply not true. Yes, people are hungry, but a lack of protein is rarely the main problem.

There is no global protein deficiency.

Eight claims related to protein production and sustainability are dissected and disproved in the report, including “We need more protein to meet the needs of a growing population”; “Livestock production is incompatible with climate and sustainability goals”; “With wild fish capture stagnating, aquaculture production should be increased”; “Regenerative livestock systems can solve environmental problems like climate change and soil degradation.”

Turns out we don’t need more protein, we aren’t being nuanced enough when we consider the environmental impacts of animal food production, aquaculture can be worse for the oceans than wild-caught fishing, and regenerative farming is much less effective at reducing greenhouse gases than we all thought.

In addition to debunking claims, the report - hooray - also provides recommendations for alternative ways of approaching problems. It was published by IPES Food, an independent, expert panel which discusses the transition to sustainable food systems around the world and is funded by philanthropists, not funded by governments or corporations.

🍏 The report https://www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/PoliticsOfProtein.pdf 🍏

More

• Labels can be effective at changing people’s choices on menus to be more sustainable (research paper)

• Carbon emissions myths in the food system (Issue 17 of The Rotten Apple)

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Allergens – How Much is Too Much When it Comes to Precautionary Labelling?

Traces of allergens in foods; how much is too much? 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 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 been working on this since 2020.

The FAO established an expert committee to do the following:

• 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.

🍏 I wrote about the first stages of this work in Issue 3 of The Rotten Apple 🍏

The committee has now released its recommendations which will be used to provide guidance for the industry and may inform updates to the Codex model food code for labelling, as described in Codex Standard 1-985 General Standard for the Labelling of Packaged Foods.

Allergens and Doses

The priority allergens are cereals containing gluten, crustacea, eggs, fish, milk, peanuts, sesame, and specific tree nuts (almond, cashew, hazelnut, pecan, pistachio and walnut).

A number of allergens were excluded because of a lack of data about the severity and/or prevalence of their allergenicity or due to their regional nature.  These are brazil nut, macadamia nut, pine nut, buckwheat, celery, lupin, mustard, and soybean.

Other foods that are possible emerging allergens, including pulses, insects and kiwi fruit will be placed on a ”watch list” for future evaluation.

‘Safety’ thresholds have been chosen by the FAO expert committee. These are called recommended reference doses (RfDs).  The committee used a method based on benchmark dose plus probabilistic hazard assessment instead of using ‘analytical-based’ or ‘no observed adverse effect level’ methods to determine the doses.

The recommended reference doses (RfDs) for the allergens, expressed as milligrams (mg) of total protein from the allergenic source are:

• Walnut 1 mg

• Pecan 1 mg

• Cashew 1 mg

• Pistachio 1 mg

• Almond 1 mg

• Hazelnut 3 mg

• Peanut 2 mg

• Sesame seed 2 mg

• Cows milk 2 mg

• Egg 2 mg

• Wheat 5 mg

• Fish 5 mg

• Crustacea 200 mg

IMPORTANT: These RfDs are not intended to be used for making a claim that a food is free from specified allergens. 

The report also discusses action levels for intakes of food that might contain unintended allergens, ranging from 10 g to 1000 g and expressed as milligrams of total protein from the allergenic food per kilogram of food.

Labelling

The committee concluded that precautionary labelling for the presence of unintended allergens is an effective strategy to protect consumers. This precautionary labelling currently takes the form of “May contain traces of…” or similar.

A single, unambiguous advisory statement should be used, instead of the multiple different statements that are in use now.  The committee also suggested that the wording of such statement(s) should clearly convey that the food is not suitable for consumers with the relevant allergy. The committee did not provide any suggested wording.

Exemptions

The committee also considered whether any highly refined foods derived from allergen-containing foods, or containing allergenic foods, such as highly refined oils might be able to be exempted from mandatory labelling.  It was recommended that any exemptions from labelling be based on the RfD divided by 30, which provides a safety margin.  Risk assessments of each food or ingredient will need to be conducted before any exemption is applied.

What next?

The recommendations of the expert committee will be used by FAO to formulate guidance for industry and consumers and may be used for updating the Codex model food code for labelling (Codex Standard 1-985 General Standard for the Labelling of Packaged Foods).

In short: 🍏 The FAO has decided on reference doses for major human food allergens, to assist manufacturers with precautionary labelling 🍏 This will help food regulators and food manufacturers which need clarity on how much unintended allergenic material is ‘too much’ in food. 🍏 A list of priority allergens has been created and reference dose recommendations have been published 🍏 Recommendations about wording for precautionary allergen labelling have been made, although no actual wording was proposed 🍏 The FAO committee recommends that precautionary labelling includes a clear insturction that the food is “not suitable for” consumers with the relevant allergy 🍏 Exemptions for highly refined foods and ingredients made with or containing allergens may be possible, based on risk assessments 🍏

Reference documents:

• FAO Food Allergen Risk Assessment Report Part 1: https://www.fao.org/3/cb9070en/cb9070en.pdf

• FAO Food Allergen Risk Assessment Report Part 2: https://www.fao.org/3/cc2946en/cc2946en.pdf

• FAO Food Allergen Risk Assessment Report Part 3:

  https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc6081en

• Summary of meeting 1 – choice of allergens;

• Summary of meeting 2 – method for the establishment of threshold levels plus provisional recommendations for reference doses for some of the allergens;

• Summary of meeting 3 – determination about whether precautionary labelling for unintended allergens (“May contain traces of…”) is helpful or not;

• Summary of meeting 4 - exemptions from labelling for highly refined ingredients considered.

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News and Resources

Our news and resources section features an expertly curated selection from around the globe and is free from filler, fluff and promotional junk - no algorithms either! Click the preview box below to access it.

News and Resources Roundup

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How to Make Diamonds with Peanut Butter (Just for Fun)

A diamond scientist used peanut butter as a carbon source for making diamonds. You can read about that here.

While you can’t make diamonds from peanut butter at home, plenty of people claim you can make crystals by immersing a lump of charcoal in a jar of peanut butter. Intriguing!

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What you missed in last week’s email

·    Survey results for live events (drumroll please)

·        Horsing around - a food fraud quick bite

·        Ice cream failures of an epic kind, again!

·        Lunch at Dad’s - Silly ‘Food Crimes’

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Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, incident reports, and emerging issues, plus an 🎧 audio version of this issue 🎧

📌 Food Fraud News 📌

Men from Türkiye and businesses from Dubai have been indicted in the USA for their alleged roles in a multi-year, high-volume organic grain fraud operation. The defendants are alleged to