Who says Gulf seafood is safe?

I watched a shopper and fishmonger at a high-end Seattle grocery debate the safety of a pile of succulent-looking, fresh, jumbo shrimp in the seafood case.

The shrimp weren’t from Thailand, Vietnam or even Mexico.  They were from the Gulf, from the waters off Louisiana or Mississippi. They weren’t frozen, packed months ago before BP’s oil rig blew up, sank, and began spewing millions of gallons of hazardous hydrocarbons over almost everything.

Fish suppliers across the country have sold off much of the frozen Gulf products they were hoarding. But now new, freshly caught, Gulf goodies are again showing up in restaurant kitchens and on the chipped ice of good fishmongers.

Good chefs and persnickety consumers have long coveted the taste of shrimp, crab, oysters and fish from the Gulf.

On Monday, a gaggle of top chefs from around the country went to Grand Isle, La., to confirm for themselves the safety of the Louisiana seafood. Many promised the shrimpers, crabbers and fishers that they would eagerly use what they catch as long as it’s safe.

There is fresh seafood in the pipeline and according to Louisiana State officials the supplies are gradually increasing as more harvesting grounds are declared safe from oil and dispersants.

Everyone knows the threat is real and that availability could change. Things such as the weakening Hurricane Alex, or those storms that will surely follow, can force the still-surging oil back over previously safe breeding ground.

Consumers should be confident in the quality of what’s being offered.  I think that buying seafood from the Gulf is a much safer gamble than consuming the virtually untested imported seafood when inundates our food supply.

While food-safety activists say barely 2 percent of the imports are inspected by understaffed FDA port inspections, there is an elaborate and intricate system for ensuring the safety of food from the Gulf.  If you want more information, here is a link to a story I wrote this week for AOLNews.

–Andrew Schneider

Harmful levels of Bisphenol A found in almost all canned foods, new study reports.

The health hazards of bisphenol A are clearly proven, but scientists now report that the levels of the chemical – used to protect canned food from corrosion and bacteria –  are surprisingly high in the  canned goods found on our kitchen shelves.

To reach this conclusion, 50 different cans of food were collected from pantries in 19 states and Ontario and were analyzed at a top food safety lab in San Francisco. BPA was found in 92 percent of the samples according to a 24-page study called “No Silver Lining,” which was released today by the National Workgroup for Safe Markets.

The highest  level of BPA was 1,140 parts per billion – believed  to be the highest ever found in the U.S. It was detected in Del Monte French Style Green Beans from a pantry in Wisconsin, the report said.

Other high scorers included Wal-Mart’s Great Value Green Peas from a store in Kentucky, and Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup from a pantry in Montana, said researchers from the coalition of more than 17 public and environmental health organizations .

“Our study details potential exposure to BPA from not just one can, but from meals prepared with canned food and drink that an ordinary person might consume over the course of a day,” Mike Schade, a co-author of the study told AOL News.

The unopened cans of fruits, vegetables, beans, soups, tomato products, sodas, and milk were sent to Anresco Laboratories. In order to determine the concentrations of BPA in the food within the can, only the food, not the packaging, was tested. (more…)

Feds bust importers of bacteria-laced cheese

Two Hondurans were arrested by federal agents today for allegedly importing more than 170,000 pounds of cheese contaminated with dangerous bacteria that could quickly cause food poisoning.

Special agents from the Food and Drug Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement charged Francisca Josefina Lopez and Jorge Alexis Ochoa Lopez with introducing four shipments of adulterated or tainted food products into interstate commerce.

The cheese, valued at $322,000 was imported from Nicaragua between December 2009 and March 2010, said a statement by the FDA.

Testing in the large FDA laboratory in Atlanta documented that three of the four shipments were contaminated with a food pathogen called Staphylococcus aureus. The fourth shipment was not pasteurized as the importers claimed on customs paperwork.

The onset of Staphylococcal food poisoning can be very rapid, the FDA says, depending on individual susceptibility to the toxin, the amount of contaminated food eaten, and the general health of the victim.

The defendants operated from a company known as The Lacteos Factory in Northwest Miami and reportedly developed an elaborate scam to conceal the hazardous cheese.

On April 1, 2010, Customs & Border Protection inspected a cargo container at the Port of Miami, which had been returned to the seaport from Lacteos, with documents stating the cheese was refused and was being returned to Central America.

CBP Inspectors discovered that the top layer of cartons on each pallet contained small bricks of cheese as labeled, but the bulk of the cargo contained in the lower tiers of boxes contained only buckets of waste water. As a result, the majority of the four-hundred eleven cartons of cheese from the entry were missing

Subsequently, a search warrant was executed at the Lacteos Factory, which revealed that the three other shipments of the cheese product had been sold to over 30 customers, despite the food still being under customs hold, which meant the cheese could not be legally sold.

Apparently, one customer conducted independent testing of the cheese, found it to be contaminated with the bacteria and returned the product. Despite that, the cheese was repackaged and sold to other customers.

The Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act states a food is deemed to be adulterated if, among other reasons, it bears or contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health.

Felony convictions under the FDA law carry possible sentences of up to three years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for each violation. In addition, if the pair is convicted of the anti-smuggling violations, they will also face a sentence of up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for each violation, and forfeiture of the smuggled goods.

Nanoparticles coming to a grocery near you

In the past, it took the skill or luck of the cook and the right touches of spices, herbs and other magic potions to seduce taste, texture, flavor and aroma from the communal pot.

This photo by ABC.net.AU shows nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, which, according to safety authorties, is used in thousands of consumer products, including some ice cream and icings. A recent UCLA study showed that large doses of this nanoparticle in the water of test animals caused DNA distruction.

Today, that culinary magic is being dished out by scientists rearranging atoms into chemical particles never before seen.  Some of these almost supernatural nanoparticles are heading toward your grocery shelves or, according to some government investigators, are there already.

I began chasing the intricacies of the fascinating and terrifying world of nanotechnology about 15-months ago, even before my newspaper – the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – was shut down by the corporate wizards.  This week, AOL News, my new employer, is publishing eight stories and charts and photos on nanotechnology and how it is and will impact your lives.

Scores of studies show that many nanoparticles have the potential for delivering significant harm to various organs, the blood supply, even the brain.  Some of the best food scientists in the world complain that far too few studies were being done on nanomaterial that was (or is) eaten.

Check out this cameo from the AOL story on food:

At last year’s Institute of Food Technologists international conference, nanotechnology was the topic that generated the most buzz among the 14,000 food-scientists, chefs and manufacturers crammed into an Anaheim, Calif., hall. Though it’s a word that has probably never been printed on any menu, and probably never will, there was so much interest in the potential uses of nanotechnology for food that a separate daylong session focused just on that subject was packed to overflowing.

In one corner of the convention center, a chemist, a flavorist and two food-marketing specialists clustered around a large chart of the Periodic Table of Elements (think back to high school science class). The food chemist, from China, ran her hands over the chart, pausing at different chemicals just long enough to say how a nanoized version of each would improve existing flavors or create new ones.

One of the marketing guys questioned what would happen if the consumer found out.

The flavorist asked whether the Food and Drug Administration would even allow nanoingredients.

The FDA would not permit me to interview anyone on the record about its efforts to regulate the safety of food products and packing that involves nanomaterial.

–Andrew Schneider

GAO report raises alarm on ‘GRAS’ — a gigantic food-additive loophole

There are four little words that give food manufacturers an enormous loophole. The phrase “Generally regarded as safe” is one that food-industry watchdogs have long wanted to erase.

Photo Yale Food Proj.

Now consumer-advocates and health-safety folks have some new ammunition. It comes in the form of a report, months in the works, from the Government Accountability Office.

For the most part, the FDA regs demand extensive examination of what manufacturers put into food, but for 50 years there has been an enormous loophole that allowed the food makers to skirt the agency’s scrutiny.

GAO’s report exposes the practice by food-makers of slipping in certain additives without spending years (and piles of money) on safety tests. These manufacturers lean on the exceptions provided by that handy designation, GRAS.

Countless spices, artificial flavors, binders, vitamins and minerals; and preservatives have been designated GRAS since the term surfaced in 1958. But the only experts who know whether not the additives are actually safe are those working for the food companies that use them. And those findings are not required to be reported to the FDA.

GAO said that the food safety agency told it that complaints and public concerns could prompt them to reconsider the safety of a GRAS substance.

Yet the FDA’s actions present a different picture.

More than 40 years ago, the GRAS-labeled artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned after allegations of serious health effects. That was pretty much it for decades.

A more serious debate over another GRAS additive is going on today and is generating repeated demands from unions, public health experts and others for another ban.

The substance is diacetyl, a chemical butter flavoring that has killed a handful of workers and sickened hundreds of others in microwave popcorn plants, bakeries, candy makers and other food processors.

What angers worker and food safety specialists even more is that many manufacturers say they have switched to a substitute for the old lung-destroying flavoring additive that government researchers have determined contains just as much or more diacetyl than the old concoction.

It too is listed as GRAS and the FDA knows it, but has done nothing.

What did the FDA say in response to this report? The agency agrees with many of the faults that GAO documented but said that it would be necessary to seek authority from Congress in order to tighten up the GRAS loophole. Which, of course, would cost a pile of tax dollars and further tax FDA’s already stretched resources.

Truth in food labeling: Coming to a box near you?

If you’ve ever peered at the nutrition-information label on your bottle of organic cranberry juice, or, for that matter, the one on the side of the Pop-Tarts box, you’ve felt the pain. You know the one: that drilling ache right between the eyes as your brain tries to decode the calories, fat, fiber, sugar and other ingredients in the product.

If the Center for Science in the Public Interest has its way, and the group’s cogent report,  “Food Labeling Chaos: The Case for Reform,” gets the attention they want, such headaches might ease.

In the 16 years since it became law, food labeling, like warnings on tobacco products, household cleaners and prescription drugs, has been an evolving practice. The public now regards such labeling as commonplace; the debate has become about the clarity and accuracy.

So, what needs fixing? Among the points made by the CSPI report are these recommendations:

–Nutrition info on food packaging should be simplified and made more user-friendly. (That vague calories-per-serving measure should be “Amount Per ½ Cup Serving” for example.)

–Practices that allow manufacturers to obfuscate nutrition measurements for multi-item packages or single-ingredient products (including meat and poultry) should be eliminated.

–Loose regulation of terms such as “all natural” or inaccurate claims of health benefits should be policed.

CSPI sent the report to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, noting in a cover letter that recent efforts by the agency to regulate labeling are commendable…but not far-reaching enough. The letter points out that a system requiring (and enforcing) accurate, accessible food-labeling products fits nicely with the Obama administration’s campaign to reduce diet-related disease for children and adults.

Democrats who anguished over dangerous popcorn butter flavoring are doing little now that they have the power.

The chemical in butter flavoring for popcorn and other foods that has sickened hundreds of workers, killed a handful and destroyed the lungs of at least three microwave popcorn addicts may be back.

In fact, it appears it never went away, despite promises from the food industry.

So what is the Obama Administration going to do about it? Nothing meaningful, at least for another year, it said this week, stunning unions, members of Congress, public health activists and physicians who have pleaded for government action to protect workers and consumers from the butter flavoring.

Two years ago this month, the nation’s leading popcorn purveyors proclaimed that they’d done away with the chemical culprit diacetyl, believed to be the harmful element in the food flavoring.

But now, government health investigators are reporting that the “new, safer, butter substitutes” are, in some cases, at least as toxic as what they replaced. (more…)

First study finds MRSA in U.S. pigs and farmers; U.K reports 3 patients sickened with the bacterium from eating pork only.

An effective way to say there isn’t a problem is never to look. That seems to be precisely what most U.S. government food-safety agencies are doing when it comes to determining whether the livestock in our food supply is contaminated with MRSA and if so, whether the often-fatal bacterium is being passed on to consumers who buy and consume that meat.

We know that some strains of MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – are extremely dangerous. Dr. Monina Klevens, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the cases of the disease reported in hospitals, schools and prisons in one year and extrapolated that “94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases.”

Earlier his year, Dr. Scott Weese, from the Department of Pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College told those attending the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases at the CDC that there was a problem. He and his colleagues had found MRSA in 10 percent of 212 samples of pork chops and ground pork bought in four Canadian provinces.

“I think it is very likely that the situation is the same in the U.S.,” he told me in a phone interview.

“We’ve proven MRSA is in pigs and the marketed pork in Canada, and we know that it’s also in U.S. pigs. It’s inconceivable that it wouldn’t also be found in the pork products from those pigs.”

This raised a bunch of obvious questions, such as, who exactly is checking to see if antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria is in the 762 million pounds of Canadian pork that’s imported into the U.S. each year?

The answer appears to be no one.

It should be the USDA. Dr. David Goldman is in charge of the agency’s four laboratories that examine imported food.

“Any pathogen or hazard that’s transmitted through the foods we regulate is a potential issue for us, and so you know, certainly we are aware of the study (Weese) did,” Goldman told me during an interview at a recent food-safety meeting in Seattle.

“There is no indication MRSA has been identified in swine going into the retail market. Not in this country. Not in swine or other livestock being sold for food in this country,” the doctor added.

But, none of the USDA labs that he runs are checking for MRSA in imported meat.

“We just don’t have a test for it,” Goldman said.

So, do we have MRSA in our American grown pigs?

The Food and Drug Administration says it doesn’t know.

Mike Herndon, an agency spokesman, said FDA scientists have been “following the emergence of MRSA from humans and animals in Central Europe and Canada and are monitoring the situation very closely.”

The FDA is aware of Weese’s study, but “we do not yet have similar data with regards to the MRSA situation among food animals and retail meats,” Herndon said.

There is no indication that FDA has tested meat for MRSA.

But the FDA and USDA eagerly pointed to a group called the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System as the protector of food and humans from foodborne bacteria. The coalition of scientists from several federal agencies primarily target salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli.

But the group does not currently screen for MRSA.

The National Pork Producers Council in Washington is sure there’s no problem. They told me “there is nothing to worry about; MRSA (in pigs) has not been found this side of the border” and “USDA and CDC has given our pigs a clean bill of health.”

A CDC spokeswoman told me that she could find “no indication we made that statement.”

Interestingly, the pork lobbyists have said their industry would oppose any attempt to test all livestock for MRSA, calling the testing “unnecessary to protect public health.”

Whereas our government apparently doesn’t see the need nor have the ability to see if pigs in the U.S. are carrying MRSA, Tara Smith, an assistant professor for the University of Iowa department of epidemiology, and her graduate researchers have done what is apparently is the first testing of swine for MRSA in the U.S.
Dr. Tara Smith

They swabbed the noses of 209 pigs from 10 farms in Iowa and Illinois and found MRSA in 70 percent of the porkers.

Today, in Boston, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, Abby Harper, one of Smith’s graduate assistants, presented the results of a study that she and Michael Male did on 20 workers at the Iowa swine farms. Harper reported that 45 percent of the workers carried the same MRSA bacterium as the pigs.

Smith told me last night that she will be working with collaborators in Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina and perhaps other areas to examine more swine farms.

“We’re going to be looking at conventional, free-range and organic or antibiotic-free pigs,” Smith said.

“We will be paying special attention to the antibiotics that are being used because there are indications that the tetracycline used in swine farming may be the cause of the spread of MRSA,” she explained.

All of Smith’s important work raises the question that Weese raised in Canada: Is MRSA-contaminated meat being sold in the U.S. market?

It is believed that proper cooking will kill the MRSA bacterium. The health threat for butchers and cooks alike, if there is one, will come from improperly handled meat.

“If people wash their hands after handling raw pork and prevent cross-contamination, risks should be very low,” Weese said from Canada.

“The main possible concern is that people could get MRSA on their hands from raw pork, then touch their nose. The nose is the prime site for MRSA to live,” he told me.

Some public-heath experts worry that butchers and professional and home cooks may be infected if MRSA bacteria on their hands entered a cut or a wound.

An understanding of the risk from MRSA in meat becomes more urgent in view of a report yesterday from the United Kingdom.

Scientists reported that three patients in separate hospitals in Scotland were infected with the ST398 strain of MRSA, the same strain that Smith and her researchers found in Midwest farms. And it’s the same strain that FDA’s Herndon says is of particular concern in the veterinary medicine and food safety arenas.

What makes this particularly important is that doctors reported that none of the patients worked on a farm nor had a close association with farm animals, raising the possibility that the superbug has entered the food chain in the U.K., according to an article by Martin Hickman in The Independent, a U.K. publication.

And, as you mull over this all-too-long post, be advised that Weese warns that MRSA could also be in beef, chicken and lamb, but no one is checking.