food museum blog

Topps Goes Bottoms Up After Burger Recall

According to today's NYTimes report, the first hint that frozen hamburger patties from Topps Meat Company of Elizabeth, NJ might carry the E.coli bacteria came on July 5 when a girl in Pennsylvania sickened after eating one. Testing confirmed the bacteria to be present on September 7.  ( Over a month for these results??)

Yet the USDA apparently did not announce the recall of 21.7 million pounds of meat until September 25. Today Topps, in business since 1940, closed its doors and sent 87 employees home.

The Times stated that "Anthony D’Urso, the chief operating officer at Topps, said the company was unable to withstand the financial burden of the recall.

“This is tragic for all concerned,” Mr. D’Urso said in a statement. “In one week we have gone from the largest U.S. manufacturer of frozen hamburgers to a company that cannot overcome the economic reality of a recall this large.”"   I think he missed the part about being falling ill from eating his company's tainted products...

The USDA website has a different, somewhat more complex report on this.

Deputy Assistant Administrator for the USDA Office of Policy, Dr. Daniel Engeljohn, said the agency would require all beef plants to demonstrate they have E.coli: 0157: H7 under control, based on a checklist established in 2002.

He went on to say, limply, "We are notifying all slaughter and grinder establishments that it is their responsibility to ensure that these measures are in place. " 

(The words "slaughter and grinder" really stick in my craw, like a piece of tainted meat. Mass animal processing described in raw terms.)

Those #$?%&*!! Blue Booze Laws

Yesterday morning I was loading up at Trader Joe's, after being away a bit, and when I pushed the cart over towards my favorite el cheapo Pinot Noir, GASP!, that annoying white rope was up in the wine department, like limp tinsel  on the mis-shaped  last-tree-in-the-lot on Christmas Eve.

Grrr....The so-called Blue Laws passed during Depression-era years used to bar liquor sales anytime on Sunday. Here in New Mexico one may not purchase alcohol before noon on the first day of the week.  This website indicates that 19 states still have Blue Laws on the books. ( Many communities have their own laws re booze, also.)

Now--I have a crazy nostalgia for the time when nothing much was open on Sunday and people took a break from consuming and mindless shopping. But in today's economy, with many people working multiple jobs, Sunday shopping is probably here to stay.

So each time I encounter that rope, I ask---what, are we babies? Do they think we will tap the bottle open on the floor and down the Pinot by 9:30 am well before the 11 am service?  What is this about?

Another law encountered here is that underage checkers cannot touch the booze that lurks among the tp, celery, and dog chews in your groceries---only a "mature" individual who has undergone rigorous training in the reading of drivers licenses can do so.  Does this law protect the young checker from a life of decadence and debauchery? Is it in place to irritate eldery tipplers? Wha?

Please advise.

Imported Food Up, Inspections Down, Consumers Go Plant Your Gardens!

25,000 shipments of food a day, 20 million a year, arrive in US ports, bringing Americans much of what we eat.  92% of all fresh and frozen seafood in the US market comes from abroad, primarily from Asia. 75% of the apple juice we drink, 72% of the mushrooms we eat, and 52% of the table grapes we munch arrives by ship at 418 ports across the country.

Only 1 % of the containers entering the country are inspected. Why? The FDA's budget for food inspection has been cut consistently for over 10 years. Only300 FDA food inspectors are on the job. ( How about putting those vigilant water bottle inspectors at airports to work at the ports?)

When Americans' family pets started falling ill during the recent pet food poisonings, it started to occur to some people to take a look at what we humans eat. According to Ann Bowser who recently reported on all this for PBS' The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, there are 76 million incidents of food poisoning among Americans each year, and 5000 deaths. How many are linked to poor food handling practices on the part of overseas suppliers she did not say. But apparently it is not uncommon for some unscrupulous seafood purveyors to add illegal antibodies to fish or shellfish, sometimes to mask the obvious past the sell-by date condition of their products.

I expect that most growers and packers of food for the US market--like those in Mexico, Canada , Chile, and Brazil, for example, ---want to maintain high standards and retain our business.  As do the Chinese, the world's largest grower of just about everything. The Chinese government recently underscored their commitment to quality trade by sentencing to death the former head of that country's food and drug agency. ( Because of the whole melamine thing, sickening and killing people, animals, etc. Heckuva job, Zheng Xiaoyu!)

US retailers have turned to overseas suppliers for food purchases in many cases because of fewer regulations in those countries and because labor and production costs are much less expensive. Of course we Americans have long expected both our gasoline and our food to be cheap....

Most American consumers rely on imports--a tiny minority grows their own or buys locally to the exclusion of anything else.  We look forward to the issue of food being on top of the list during any future discussions of the security of the homeland. ( And my gawd, doesn't "Homeland Security" sound creepily un-American linguistically, and hasn't it done so from the inception?)

Baked Beans as WMD's...............

  Apparently actor Hugh Grant attacked a paparazzi with a "tub" of baked beans. No word as to whether or not his missile was filled with the egregiously horrendous British Heinz product, or with actual home-baked navy beans made with molasses, brown sugar, pork, dry mustard and so on.

"Beans on toast" has long been a Brit comfort food--I well recall years ago the time I ordered it at a motorway joint that clearly had no veggie food available. It arrived, the pale, reddish beans sliding across the white toast--on top?  An ordinary household thumbtack.

Reader, I sent it back.  Beans can indeed be dangerous.

The Perils of Eating, PLUS, Is the Homeland Secure?

The world's number one exporter of fruits and vegetables, China, is finally coming under scrutiny as its customers get a hint that tainted pet food ingredients could well lead to iffy items aimed at humans.

According to a piece in today's Washington Post, "China has been especially poor at meeting international standards. The United States subjects only a small fraction of its food imports to close inspection, but each month rejects about 200 shipments from China, mostly because of concerns about pesticides and antibiotics and about misleading labeling. In February, border inspectors for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration blocked peas tainted by pesticides, dried white plums containing banned additives, pepper contaminated with salmonella and frozen crawfish that were filthy.

Since 2000, some countries have temporarily banned whole categories of Chinese imports. The European Union stopped shipments of shrimp because of banned antibiotics. Japan blocked tea and spinach, citing excessive antibiotic residue. And South Korea banned fermented cabbage after finding parasites in some shipments.

As globalization of the food supply progresses, "the food gets more anonymous and gradually you get into a situation where you don't know where exactly it came from and you get more vulnerable to poor quality," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Centre for World Food Studies at Vrije University in Amsterdam, who researches China's exports to the European Union."

Meanwhile, back home, Congress held hearings about the American spinach and salmonella- afflicted peanut butter that caused sickness and, in the case of the E.coli-tainted spinach, death.

Seldom mentioned is that fact that the numerous US regulatory agencies involved in food safety are understaffed and lacking adequate lines of communication and cooperation with one another.  They often overlap on or duplicate some tasks, while leaving other areas of concern unexplored.

But worse---get a load of this April 22 report by Elizabeth Williamson in the Washington Post.

"The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, the documents show."

Before the hearings began panel chairman Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich said this:  "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road."

Food safety is as much a national security issue as my audacious attempt to carry on an airplane a sealed bottle of water and 4.1 ounces of face cream. Please.

Small Family Farm Threatens National Security?

Yesterday dozens of  federal agents in 20 vehicles invaded  Mike Zimmerman's 40 acre dairy farm, Sandhills Dairy, in Towner, North Dakota,  supposedly in pursuit of illegal aliens. Some of Zimmerman's workers, all of whom were hired after showing legal papers, were arrested by members of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE) team. Mike's son was grabbed as he came out of the shower.

The AP reported:

"Mike Zimmerman, who operates the Sandhills Dairy, estimated about 50 officers were on the scene Tuesday. He said they displayed weapons, kicked down doors and handcuffed his son and employees. Officers also handcuffed a longtime friend of his, held a gun to his head and asked for his birth certificate, Zimmerman said.

"It's an unbelievable, frustrating and humiliating experience," Zimmerman said of the raid."

We all carry our birth certificates around with us regularly, don't we, tucked in next to our marriage licenses and college diplomas?  Hope Mike's milk didn't curdle.

European Health Ministers Take On Obesity

Today's story by Maria Cheng from myway.com via Raw Story reports that:

"European health ministers from 53 countries approved the world's first charter to fight obesity on Thursday, vowing greater action against the epidemic of expanding waistlines across the continent.

The charter, approved in Istanbul, Turkey, was drafted by the World Health Organization in consultation with its European member states. It is the first real attempt to compel national authorities to take concrete action to combat obesity."

According to the article,  half of all Europeans, ( that's a large group of disparate people!,) and 20 percent of its children are overweight.

"One of the charter's more contentious inclusions is an obligation for the private sector to limit the marketing of fatty, sugary foods to children. It calls for specific regulatory measures to "substantially reduce" the advertising of unhealthy foods to children.

The clause implies that governments should introduce legislation regarding marketing to children, with an eventual move to adopting an international code of practice. In the past, the food industry has fought against such regulation, since it may eat into their profits."

When is the summit of the Americas on this issue?

Beyond Bizarre Food News Coverage--The Suspect Fingered Prawns

Never thought I would write a syllable about this peculiar fellow named Karr, but the AP ( August 21) insisted on providing details of his (maybe last decent) meal, on the Thai Airways plane that brought him Business Class from Thailand to the United States.

"Before takeoff, he sipped champagne. During dinner, Karr had pate, salad with walnut dressing and fried king prawn with steamed rice and broccoli, followed by a slice of Valrhona chocolate cake for dessert. Karr had a beer before a glass of French chardonnay with the main course."

Thanks for sharing, AP.

Fuel, Farmers and Food

With fuel costs rising regularly, will small-scale growers whose customers are local be able to keep their prices lower than the farmers who ship long distance?  According to a recent piece by Stacy Matlock in the Santa Fe New Mexican,  Matthew Romero,  head of the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, says he is spending $140 a week to run his truck, as compared to about $50 two years ago. And parts he needs for his farm cost 30 to 40 percent more to ship. So he has already raised his prices.  Roasted green chiles will run over $30 a bushel, instead of $20, last year's price.

On the other hand, Romero has a loyal customer base that probably expects to buy his fresh products at local growers markets regardless.  A small 3 acre farm one hour from Santa Fe is so efficiently run its owners don't think the fuel issue will affect their prices much. They think local growers, in fact, will have more opportunity to gain new customers as food prices rise nationally.

( For a fine look at farm markets in the Washington, DC area, read this report in the Washington Post.)

On the national front, Michelle Chen reported for The New Standard in May that the Senate Appropriations Committee was proposing emergency funding in "energy assistance" for farmers. 

Chen writes: "According to an analysis by the watchdog organization Environmental Working Group, among the 1.1 million farms that stand to gain from the proposed measure, the bonus is heavily skewed toward the largest enterprises, with 47 major commercial farms raking in aid payments exceeding $100,000.

Overall, the top ten percent would sweep up about 60 percent of the funds, leaving nearly 900,000 farmers sharing the short end of the handout, receiving only about $370 on average. Farms producing non-subsidized crops, including many fruit and vegetable producers, would receive no subsidy, regardless of how much they lost to high fuel prices. "

The U.S. government announced in July that wholesale food costs,  along with gas prices, recently rose at their fastest pace in 20 months.

( Photo from Contra Costa, CA., Health Services.)

Americans Will Eat Roofing Paper Happily In Their Snacks As Long as Snacks Are Fat-Free Dept: Olestra

Remember olestra? It's a fake fat, with no calories, approved by the FDA but linked to many cases of stomach cramps and diarrhea. Olestra also appears to deplete the body's fat-soluble vitamins. First used by Frito-Lay in its line of  Wow! chip products, olestra is still there, but since 2004 "Wow" has been called "Light,"  thus confusing snackers who thought they were avoiding olestra. Apparently, for many, frequent bathroom runs continued.

Over the long run, diarrhea can be a fairly effective weight loss tool, of course.  Just ask anyone with cholera.

(Above: Olestra molecule--a cry for help? The finger? Diagram from Elmhurst College, http://www.elmhurst.edu/)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest threatened to sue Frito-Lay unless it clearly labeled front and back the Tostitos, Lay's and Ruffles containing olestra. ( Olestra was listed as an ingredient, and Olean, the brand name of olestra, was on the front.)  Frito-Lay has agreed, according to yesterday's AP Story, and also made an unrestricted grant of $150,000 to Harvard Medical School's nutrition division.

Back in 2003, the FDA changed the labeling requirement for olestra, stating:

" The FDA concluded that the label statement was no longer warranted because:

"Real-life" consumption studies of products containing olestra showed olestra caused only infrequent, mild gastrointestinal (GI) effects. In fact, a 6-week study with more than 3,000 people showed that the group consuming olestra-containing chips experienced only a minor increase in bowel movement frequency compared to those people who consumed only full-fat chips.

• Post-market studies showed consumers are aware of olestra and its potential GI effects. "

Naturally the labeling change caused snack giants to introduce new lines of items containing the fake fat.

Here's Proctor & Gamble's pr output on Olean, developed by P&G and appropved by the FDA in 1996.  In the website's FAQ section, there's this:

"Olean is made from ingredients found in common foods like vegetable oil and sugar. Then, it’s processed in a way that adds zero fat to the snacks you love. Since Olean is not digested, it’s similar to eating foods like apples, corn and bran, where the insoluble fiber is not broken down by the body. So, when you eat Olean snacks, the Olean passes through the digestive tract without adding any dietary fat or calories. And, because Olean molecules are much larger than those of ordinary fats, the body's digestive enzymes cannot break them down. " ( Foodie is trying for the jaundiced effect up there, just for emphasis.)

Here's how the Center for Science in the Public Interest reports on olestra.