Tag Archives: oregano

Maybe they replaced it with pot: Australian suppliers caught selling oregano mixed with other leaves

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Before marijuana could be bought at a dispensary – Australia, you’re so behind the times on this, same-sex marriage and asylum seekers – would-be middle-school dealers would often pass off bags of oregano as weed.

oregano-marijuanaThose who smoked it got a headache: they did not get high.

A couple of Australian supermarkets were caught doing a similar bait and switch.

Food fraud.

Esther Han of the Canberra Times reports Aldi and supermarket supplier Menora have admitted to selling nearly 190,000 units of adulterated oregano products over a one-year period and have promised never – never ever double secret probation promise — to do it again.

The budget grocery chain and Menora have signed court enforceable undertakings with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, committing to conduct annual testing of the composition of their herb and spice products.

Aldi sold more than 126,800 units of its Stonemill oregano across its 400 stores in 2015, documents show. And 61,480 Menora-branded products were sold at Coles, Woolworths, IGA and other stores in NSW, Vic, WA and SA in the same year.

They claimed the products were 100 per cent dried oregano leaves, despite a “substantial presence of olive leaves”.

“This is extremely bad behaviour. I don’t think it’s in anybody’s head that you’re getting anything other than pure oregano and our message to retailers is: ‘Check the products you’re selling,” said ACCC chairman Rod Sims.

“The offer of refunds is there. If you take back the empty container you’ll get a refund, take back proof of purchase, you’ll get a refund.”

The undertakings follow an investigation by consumer group Choice, which in April said laboratory tests showed seven out of 12 popular oregano products were less than 50 per cent oregano leaves. They were instead bulked out with olive and sumac leaves.

The worst offender was Master of Spices, which was only 10 per cent oregano, followed by Hoyt’s, at 11 per cent, and Aldi’s Stonemill, at 26 per cent.

The test results showed Spice & Co and Menora’s products were only a third oregano, Spencers was 40 per cent and G Fresh was 50 per cent.

Choice spokesman Tom Godfrey said as dried oregano was a fixture in most kitchens across the country, the undertakings were a real win for Australian consumers.

“We need be able to trust what is written on the labels of the foods we purchase in our supermarkets,” he said.

Food fraud: Is that really oregano? Is it? Is it?

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Herbs are about the only thing I can grow that aren’t eaten by birds, possums and skinks.

oreganoExcept when the cats decide to self-bathe in the wonderful aroma of my herbs, when someone lets them out onto the piece of concrete substituting for a back yard.

Seven of the 12 dried oregano samples sampled by Choice Australia contained other ingredients, including olive and sumac leaves.

Last year a study reported that 25% of dried oregano samples in the UK were adulterated. Concerned that Australian consumers might be affected by the same issue, CHOICE decided to carry out a spot check on the authenticity of oregano being sold here. We bought a selection of dried oregano products from supermarkets, grocers and delis in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth – 12 different brands in total – and had a single sample of each product analysed.

Shockingly, the results of a unique screening test for oregano adulteration showed that of the 12 samples, only five were 100% oregano. The other seven – from brands Master of Spices, Hoyt’s, Stonemill (Aldi), Spice & Co, Menora, Spencers and G Fresh – contained ingredients other than oregano, including olive leaves (in all seven samples) and sumac leaves (in two samples). Ingredients other than oregano made up between 50% and 90% of the adulterated samples.

It’s important to note that we tested just one sample of a single batch from each brand, so the results aren’t necessarily representative of each of those individual brands and companies’ whole range of oregano products.

Can oregano make healthier chickens?

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There’s lots of stories about food safety miracle spices and cures, but often in the absence of valid verification.

So the New York Times decided to further erode its scientific credibility by running a story about Bell & Evans, a Pennsylvania poultry producer that feeds chickens a specially milled diet laced with oregano oil and a touch of cinnamon.

Scott Sechler swears by the concoction as a way to fight off bacterial diseases that plague meat and poultry producers without oregano.smoke.dec.12resorting to antibiotics, which some experts say can be detrimental to the humans who eat the meat.

Skeptics of herbal medicines abound, as any quick Internet search demonstrates. “Oil of oregano is a perennial one, advertised as a cure for just about everything,” said Scott Gavura, a pharmacist in Toronto who writes for the Web site Science-Based Medicine. “But there isn’t any evidence, there are too many unanswered questions and the only proponents for it are the ones producing it.”

The oregano oil product Mr. Sechler uses, By-O-Reg Plus, is made by a Dutch company, Ropapharm International. In the late 1990s, Bayer conducted trials on the product, known as Ropadiar in Europe, comparing its ability to control diarrhea in piglets caused by E. coli with that of four of the company’s products.

In all four test groups, Ropadiar outperformed the Bayer products. “Strange but true!” Dr. Lucio Nisoli, the Bayer product manager, wrote in his report on the trial. “Compared to the various anti-infectives, with Ropadiar I have obtained much more effective and quicker results. Furthermore, piglets treated with Ropadiar look much more healthy and were not so dehydrated and wasted.”

Astrid Köhler, a spokeswoman in Monheim, Germany, for Bayer Healthcare’s animal health business, confirmed that the company had done the trial but said that “in further evaluations the results of the first study could not be replicated with the same species, nor with other species.”

Other testing is rare. A test of oregano oil on four small farms in Maine, which was financed by a $9,914 grant from the Agriculture Department, found it was effective in controlling the parasites and worms that afflict goats and sheep.

After a chicken flock leaves a barn at Bell & Evans for slaughter, for instance, the facility is hosed down, its water lines are cleaned out and everything is disinfected. It sits empty for two to three weeks to allow bacteria to die off and to ensure that the rodents that carry salmonella and campylobacter are eliminated.

“You can’t just replace antibiotics with oregano oil and expect it to work,” Mr. Sechler said.