Herbal horses**t; products omit ingredients, contain fillers

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The majority of herbal products on the market contain ingredients not listed on the label, with most companies substituting cheaper alternatives and using fillers, according to new research from the University of Guelph.

The study, published today in the open access journal BMC Medicine, used DNA barcoding technology to test 44 herbal products sold by 12 food.fraud.adulterationcompanies. Only two of the companies provided authentic products without substitutions, contaminants or fillers.

Overall, nearly 60 per cent of the herbal products contained plant species not listed on the label.

Researchers detected product substitution in 32 per cent of the samples.  More than 20 per cent of the products included fillers such as rice, soybeans and wheat not listed on the label.

“Contamination and substitution in herbal products present considerable health risks for consumers,” said lead author Steven Newmaster, an integrative biology professor and botanical director of the Guelph-based Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO), home of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding.

“We found contamination in several products with plants that have known toxicity, side effects and/or negatively interact with other herbs, supplements and medications.”

One product labelled as St. John’s wort contained Senna alexandrina, a plant with laxative properties. It’s not intended for prolonged use, as it can cause chronic diarrhea and liver damage and negatively interacts with immune cells in the colon.

Several herbal products contained Parthenium hysterophorus (feverfew), which can cause swelling and numbness in the mouth, oral ulcers, and nausea. It also reacts with medications metabolized by the liver.

One ginkgo product was contaminated with Juglans nigra (black walnut), which could endanger people with nut allergies.

Unlabelled fillers such as wheat, soybeans and rice are also a concern for people with allergies or who are seeking gluten-free products, Newmaster said.

7 sick in E. coli outbreak: Public Health Agency of Canada doesn’t cross provincial borders

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Jim Romahn writes in his blog that Belmont Meat Packers burgers have crossed every provincial border across Canada, but the Public Health Agency of Canada isn’t posting any information about how many people have been sickened so far after eating burgers processed at the Toronto plant.

Loblaws is recalling its President’s Choice products from across Canada.
Sobeys is recalling its Compliments products from across Canada, and cold.cut.cannonmaybe we’ll soon learn that it, too, will be recalling them from across Canada.

But as far as the Public Health Agency is concerned, it’s not involved until people are sickened in more than one province or territory.

But the agency did post information from the Ontario Ministry of Health indicating that seven people in Ontario have so far been linked to these burgers.

It makes me wonder how things are going to work out as food safety transitions from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to Health Canada where it will be joined at the hip with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

At least being joined at the hip promises to be better than being under the head of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz of “death by a thousand cold cuts” fame. 

Canadian food inspectors to report through Health, not Agriculture

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, largely created and run for the first five years by my eventual friend, Ron Doering, is now going to report to Parliament via Health Canada.

My guess is that everyone got tired of the misguided rants about CFIA reporting through Agriculture, and that Agriculture was there to promote doug.ron.jan.13food, not protect public health, and it was an obvious conflict of interest.

Obvious only to conspiracy seekers.

Doering always had a straight answer – food safety has to come first, otherwise there is no market.

To me, the change is cosmetic, like promoters massaging language, so that genetic engineering becomes natural enhancement, or whatever the marketers are pushing these days.

I don’t care who does the regulating and inspection, as long as the results are available for public scrutiny.

Health Canada brags “this reorganization will strengthen Canada’s food safety system by bringing all three authorities responsible for food safety under one Minister. This will ensure clear focus, easy collaboration, and timely communication with Canadians when it comes to food safety. This change also further underscores the CFIA’s commitment to food safety as a top priority.”

According to Canadian Press, food safety in Canada is a three-way:

• Health Canada develops food safety standards and policies and participates in public awareness campaigns about safe food practices;

• CFIA checks that industry meets federal food safety and regulatory requirements; and,

• the public health agency steps in when outbreaks occur, gauging the scope of the problem, providing epidemiology services and advising people how to protect themselves.

Sounds great. Why has the Public Health Agency of Canada been silent for a week about the latest E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in hamburger?

Sunland shuttered: NM peanut butter plant involved in a nationwide salmonella outbreak last year closes its doors

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In fall, 2012, 41 people in 20 states contracted Salmonella from natural and organic peanut butter, produced by Sunland Inc. of Portales, New Mexico, and primarily through purchases at Trader Joe’s.

By Nov. 2012, Sunland was eager to reopen, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had other ideas, and filed a permanent injunction against Sunland.

In May, 2013, Sunland announced it was back in production and company officials said their barf-inducing coveted natural and organic sunland_20120925084929_320_240-300x225butters could be back on store shelves within a month.

But now they’re bankrupt.

Food safety can do that to an operation.

Officials with Sunland Inc., the nation’s largest organic peanut butter processor, said “ongoing financial and liquidity challenges made it necessary for the company to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code.”

Chapter 7 means the company shuts down and liquidates its assets. According to the bankruptcy filing, Sunland has an estimated $10 million to $50 million in assets, $50 million to $100 million in liabilities and 1,000 to 5,000 creditors.

Sunland reopened last May, but reportedly took a big financial hit from the eight-month closure and lawsuits that followed the salmonella outbreak.

The company had about 100 employees, who were notified Wednesday that the plant was shut down.

Portales Mayor Sharon King lamented the closure, calling it a “very sad day for our community” and noting that Sunland had been in business for decades.

7 sick from E. coli burgers in Ontario; federal public health MIA, no government shutdown

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There’s no federal government shutdown in Canada, which is a different country than the U.S., but bureaucratic sleepiness continues.

A week after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced a recall of hamburgers made by Toronto-based Belmont Meats Ltd., the feds in meatwad.raw.hamburgerthe form of Health Canada and/or Public Health Agency of Canada, have provided no information on how many people are sick.

Maybe they’re still at the cottage.

Ontario’s top doctor, Dr. Arlene King, has filled the void, and has stated that seven Ontario residents are sick with an additional suspected case.

The recall has been expanded from Compliments brand Super 8 Beef Burgers sold in packages of six in Sobeys, Sobeys Urban, Foodland, Freshco and Price Chopper stores in Ontario and Atlantic Canada to ow include President’s Choice Beef Burgers in 4.54 kilogram packages sold nationally in Loblaws banner stores and Webers Bucket of Burgers sold in 1.02 kilogram packages, which may have been distributed across Canada.

Those aren’t grape nuts

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As a teenager I worked in a bulk food store. The job was great. I hung out with a close friend who worked there too and my responsibilities consisted of taking large bags or boxes of food, opening them up, and putting them into bins.grape+nuts3

I also got to eat a lot of wine gums and M&M’s.

Customers would come in, grab an empty bag and scoop out what they needed. Cost was based on weight. One of the popular bins (sort of surprisingly), which required at least a weekly refill, was Grape Nuts, the Post-made cereal. The flaw of the system where I worked was that the bins had tiny labels and a few times a week someone looking for Grape Nuts would fill a bag up with textured vegetable protein.

Dried cat vomit also apparently looks like Grape Nuts to Hartford CBS affiliate reporter Scot Haney. During newscast banter Haney, (below, exactly as shown) picks up what he believed was a Grape Nut from the floor and reveals later that he accidentally had eaten dried cat vomit that he had brought in on his shoe.

Yum.

Another petting zoo outbreak? Maybe

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Families, according to WDRB, are claiming their children got sick after going to the Huber’s Petting Zoo in Indiana.

The Clark County Health Department confirms one E. coli case, but says at this point, Huber’s Orchard, Winery and Vineyards and its petting zoo courtlynn.petting.zooare not connected.

A mother tells WDRB that her 2-year-old daughter is at Kosair Children’s Hospital after her kidneys failed after contracting E.coli.

She says she believes she got it from going to Huber’s petting zoo and claims there are two other sick children at the hospital dealing with the same thing who also pet the animals there.

Huber’s says it has received numerous calls and has issued its own statement on Facebook.

Dana Huber with Huber’s Marketing and Public Relations says, “To be completely honest the Facebook posts, what was being posted as of yesterday was very concerning to us. Our family didn’t want to release information until it was the most accurate information. Again, we handled it the best that we could.”

Huber says the family wanted to set the record straight and let people know there is no link between E. coli and their facility. Huber’s says their thoughts are with the family who has been affected.

A table of petting zoo related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.

Needle tenderized? No problemo; AMI asks for withdrawal of beef rule

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The American Meat Institute has submitted comments recommending that USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) withdraw its proposed rule requiring labeling on needle- or blade-tenderized beef products.

“The existing labeling scheme for products that have been needle injected or blade tenderized, with appropriate qualifying statements or tenderizingPageother label information, provides open and transparent information based on recognizable common and usual product names and should be kept,” the comments say.

The comments highlight, among other things, the safety record of mechanically tenderized (MT) products, as well the proposed rule’s potential to confuse consumers by changing the product name to include the mechanically tenderized distinction. 

AMI’s full comments are available at http://www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/94617

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280 sick; Just cook it doesn’t cut it, difference between prevention and monitoring

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Industry is responsible for producing safe food.

Farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, restaurants and consumers, these individuals are responsible for doing what they can to produce FunkyChickenHimicrobiologically safe food.

It’s not the job of government, and they don’t really care.

Does any business owner really want to hold their brand hostage with government inspection, or should they go above and beyond to protect that brand they’ve worked hard to establish.

The hysterical level of stories about how furloughed U.S. government types have been brought back to work to monitor the outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg that has sickened at least 280 linked to Foster Farms poultry, highlights the difference between prevention and monitoring: government is there to monitor to establish a minimal standard, like the Pinto, and it’s usually after the outbreak.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has now threatened Foster Farms with shutting down the three plants involved in the outbreak by withholding inspection.

Foster Farms has announced no plans to recall any of its chicken products, nor did it recall any chickens in the previous outbreak, which sickened more than 100 people between January and July of this year.

There is no legal requirement for companies to issue recalls in cases involving whole – rather than ground – meat, but they could do it voluntarily.

“From a business standpoint, it sends a tremendously bad message to your customers,” Craig Hedberg, a food safety expert and professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, told NBC. “They obviously have this strain present in their chickens and they’re not adequately controlling it in their plants and it’s getting out to customers.”

Instead, Foster Farms, and a lot of government and industry apologists have repeated advice that consumers should clean thoroughly, avoid cross-contamination and cook the chicken beyond 165 degrees – a temperature that will kill any salmonella bacteria.

We’ve done studies where we observed these consumers preparing a chicken dinner. Cross-contamination is almost impossible to avoid.

But why not blame the consumer. It’s easier and more efficient.

Dr. Katrina Hedberg, Oregon’s state epidemiologist, is the lone public chicken.thermhealth exception, and is correct when she says, consumers are not to blame.

“We’re not seeing an outbreak because people suddenly decided they like to eat their chicken rare,” Hedberg said. “If you’re suddenly seeing an uptick in cases, it’s probably because there’s more bacteria.”

A spokesman for Foster Farms declined to give food safety specifics when asked by Lynne Terry of The Oregonian, saying food safety practices are “proprietary.” When asked why the company did not act sooner, a spokesman said Foster Farms wanted to be sure the added safety practices were effective.

The USDA has known about this problem for a decade. Oregon scientists have been tracking a Salmonella Heidelberg strain first associated with Foster Farms in 2004. State authorities notified both the USDA and Foster Farms.

Those comments do not bolster consumer confidence.

If you’ve got a good food safety system, brag about it.

Because some companies are better.

Turkey on the table; praise be to Canadian Thanksgiving

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I paid $9.50/kg for the Canadian Thanksgiving turkey we’ll be carving this Sunday afternoon (after reaching a thermometer-verified 165F or higher; I’m not one of those you-can’t-over-cook-a-turkey-that’s-what-the-gravy-is-for folks).

That’s about $4.50 a pound.

I told the butcher, one of the few to stock turkey (he also has crocodile and kangaroo) that in North America it would be aust.turkey.label_.12-225x300$0.99/pound. Market demand, I guess.

Turkey’s just not that big in Australia, even though we have dozens wandering the streets in our near-to-downtown Brisbane suburb.

The cooking instructions on the label are the same as last year – scientifically incorrect and suck. No safe cooking temperature, no thermometer advice, and says to wash the bird.

No one will be washing the bird in this house.

Last year we had about 30 people show up, and the locals were amazed by such a thing – a turkey.

Dr. Temple Grandin is featured in a video about the turkey industry designed to give the public a look at how the birds are raised, slaughtered and readied for Thanksgiving dinner.

The National Turkey Federation and the American Meat Institute paid for the video which features Grandin with a flock of 1,500 birds and takes the viewer all the way through the stunning and slaughter process.

I like the transparency. It undercuts any attempts at conspiracy theories.

But a 13-minute video? Edit it to two minutes.

My friend Jim Romahn asks, why hasn’t the Canadian turkey industry, which is far more organized than in the United States, done something like this long ago?

“I’m really pleased that the industry wanted the public to see this process because I think we need to show people how it’s just done right in a typical plant,” Grandin said in a news release.

“There’s a lot of good work going on in animal agriculture and I’m glad we’re telling our story openly and honestly.”  

Brunch will be served Oct. 13 at 2 p.m. Show up if you’re around.