Knowledge may be power, but it’s also likely to make you more anxious…if that knowledge is about sweetening agents in food.

It’s hard to keep the warnings and blessings straight. There’s all that rabid interest in carb and glycemic levels in foods for example. Or the perils of high-fructose corn syrup, and that old, familiar lab-rat killer: aspartame.

Photo courtesy of Ethel Aardvark/Wikipedia

(Last Sunday’s daunting and fascinating piece in The New York Times Sunday Magazine on the evils of sugar has brought the conversation to a new and higher pitch.)

On the up side, the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) has cleared away some of the confusion—or at least assured us that a whole lot of research has been done–by publishing a piece on the extensive research completed (and continuing) on sweeteners made from the stevia plant.

The April 2011 issue of Food Technology carries an article by Robert S. McQuate reminding us that the compounds which make the stevia plant sweet have been approved for use in dietary supplements since 1995, and since 2008, “high-purity steviol glycosides and high-purity rebaudioside (Reb) A compositions that have been determined to be GRAS are permitted in foods in the U.S.” (GRAS meaning “generally regarded as safe.”)

The work already done on this product is impressive, as is the potential market for it.

McQuate reports that South America, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, France and several Asian countries have studied and permitted some use of sweeteners derived from the stevia plant. He traces, in considerable detail, the regulatory path to date. If you’re a worrier—this is all good.

–The Food Watchdog Staff

When it comes to protecting the nation’s food supply, even after doing specifically what Congress and the Obama White House demanded, neither USDA nor the Food and Drug Administration were spared from cuts in the budget war.

Food-safety activists cringed at the actions of the Republican-led House of Representatives, and President Obama’s budget did not grant additional funds requested to assure the safety of meats and monitor foreign-produced food arriving at our ports. Programs for federal meat inspection, international food-safety inspection and state food-safety inspection were hit hard, safety experts told me last week.

“We are cutting programs not because we want to, but because we have to,” said Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, adding, “American families have been forced to tighten their belts and government must do the same.”

Patty Lovera, Assistant Director of Food & Water Watch told me that the cuts make no sense and she points to an expected 500-million-pound increase in the amount of beef and poultry slaughtered this year.

“The President cuts the resources for meat inspection, even while admitting that USDA inspectors will have an increased amount of meat and poultry to inspect next year. It also fails to give the FDA enough resources to put the newly passed food safety reform bill into effect on schedule,” she said.

USDA rules say that meat cannot be released for market without the presence of a USDA inspector.

Without the funding, the agency has no plans to supplement the number of inspectors in these processing plants to handle the higher volume of meat.

This means that the speed of slaughter lines will increase, as will pressure on already overworked inspectors. The obvious result is the likelihood of bad meat and poultry showing up groceries and butcher shops, said FWW executive director Wenonah Hauter.

Here is a link to the story I wrote for AOL News that looked at the danger of several other budget cuts.

–Andrew Schneider

It took 73 years to finally pass updated laws designed to  protect America’s food supply from lethal bacteria and the fraud, sloppiness, and mishandling of food processors.

The battle over the language was hard fought yet still effective. The demanded compromises wound up being acceptable to most and still protected the mom and pop farms.

President Obama signed it late Monday and many breathed an enormous sigh of relief.  But they were probably people who haven’t been listening to what the incoming Republican power brokers have been saying about funding the new life-saving legislation.

“No,” pretty much sums up the opinions of the Republicans who will take over the House appropriations committee Tuesday.

Photo U/FLU - food sciences

They say we have the safest food system in the world. So there is no need to scrounge up the $1.4 billion it would take to hire all the inspectors and investigators, and equip and staff a network of laboratories able to capture and identify outbreaks of foodborne pathogens before the body count soared.

.  “Congress is not going to add that to the FDA food budget any time soon. With the House Appropriation committee coming under the rule of the GOP, this is unlikely,” Dr. David Acheson, former Associate Commissioner of Food for the Food and Drug Agency told me last week.

Without the funding, Acheson said, “then it will not be possible to enforce any new regulations effectively which means that the public health impact of the new legislation will be compromised.”

The legislation demands several vital improvements.

Among the most surprising to many may be that the new act now gives the FDA the authority to order a mandatory recall of dangerous food.   Government agencies can order recalls of defective hair driers, cribs and car seats but when it came to food confirmed to be contaminated with E. coli, salmonella or other killer pathogens, the most FDA could do was request that manufacturers pull the dangerous food off store shelves.  Now they can order the food be removed.

In the past 30 days, there have been recalls of organic beef with E. coli, clover and sprouts with salmonella, ginger-bread houses  with Staphylococcus, and lots of cheese laced with E. coli.

Acheson says that when fully implemented, the legislation will make the US food supply safer but it alone can’t be counted on to keep consumers safe.

“No legislation could do that.  There is an expectation by some that the President’s signature will signal a reduction in both outbreaks and recalls and I don’t think either will happen,” said Acheson who has a lengthy history of conducting cutting-edge research on foodborne pathogens.

A longer version of this story can be found on AOL News.

This is also cross-posted on coldtruth.com

Free samples of cheese given out in at least five states may be contaminated with E. coli.

At least 25 people who may have eaten samples of  Bravo Farms Dutch Style Gouda cheese at Costco stores have been diagnosed with the sometimes fatal food pathogen, according to a warning issued late Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration .

Photo from Bravo Farms' website

No deaths have been reported but nine people have been hospitalized, including one with hemolytic uremic syndrome. That illness is most often found in children and can lead to organ failure and death in 5 percent to 10 percent of cases.

So far, there are 11 confirmed cases in Arizona, one in California, eight in Colorado, three in New Mexico and two in Nevada.

Most people infected with E. coli O157:H7 develop diarrhea and abdominal cramps, which usually passes within a few days.

“While most people recover within a week, some may develop a severe infection,’’ the FDA warning said. “But as symptoms of diarrhea improve, HUS-caused kidney failure can occur.

“People with HUS should be hospitalized immediately, as their kidneys may stop working and they may be at risk for other serious health problems,” FDA cautioned.

Bravo Farms is based in Traver, Calif.  The FDA, the federal Centers for Disease Control and California officials have begun an investigation of the cheese factory.

Costco is advising consumers to return any remaining Bravo Farms Dutch Style Gouda cheese they may have at home for a full refund.

The chain is cooperating in the investigation and has voluntarily removed the cheese from its stores and, using card purchase records, has notified consumers by phone of the situation, FDA said.

(check AOL News for latest updates)

Do you ever wonder why the beef industry and government warn consumers to “cook the life out of your burgers?”

To understand what’s behind these words of caution we need to discuss some facts, acronyms, how the food poisoning, especially from E. coli, is caused and, of course, the ever-present result of the pathogen, bloody diarrhea.

One of President Obama’s first initiatives was to improve the safety of America’s food supply. The Senate has yet to pass the much-touted Food Safety bill and consumer activists say the status-quo hasn’t changed in most food safety agencies. But recent actions by USDA’s new top food safety doc, Elizabeth Hager, my be a sign that change can happen. Photo from Obama Foodorams

First, E. coli is short for Escherichia coli, a bacteria that inhabits the gastrointestinal tract of humans and other warmblooded mammals. There are hundreds of strains of E. coli. Some are beneficial, part of the gut’s normal flora. Many are harmless. But several, like E. coli 0157, can cause hemolytic-uremic syndrome, or HUS, which can produce the signature abnormal bleeding, kidney failure, central nervous system disruption, seizures, coma and death.

The ones that do harm are often tagged STEC (Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli), which was discovered more than a century ago by a Japanese microbiologist named Shiga. He documented the link between contact with feces and the dangerous pathogen.

Consider this uncomfortable reality: E. coli lives in the intestines of even healthy cattle, and so it’s almost assured that most, if not all, cow feces carry the pathogens.

All it takes to understand how feces contaminates beef heading to market is to spend just a few minutes in almost any of the 6,000 federally inspected slaughterhouses and meat processing plants in the United States.

There is a clipboard-carrying inspector, often in a blood smudged white coat and hardhat, from the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Services in every meat processing operation in America.

“But basically what they are doing is no different than what inspectors have been doing for 100 years. They are looking at stuff,” attorney Marler said.

At the turn of the last century, when inspectors were first put in these plants, the things they were looking for were tumors, animals that were clearly tubercular.

“Nowadays, when 50 e. coli 0157 bacterium will kill and 100,000 would fit on the head of a pin, you could look at a carcass all day long and you can’t tell whether it’s contaminated or not,” the lawyer said..

E. coli from the cow’s intestines or fecal material on the hide is often spread throughout the beef-processing plants. The speed of mass production in the commercial slaughterhouse or high-speed butchering lines often overwhelms efforts to keep the operations clean.

The pathogen can be found on steaks and roasts, but this isn’t a health problem, the industry says, because these solid cuts of beef don’t provide bacteria access into the meat below the surface and can be rinsed with ammonia or other anti-bacterial treatment.

Ground beef is a completely different story.

The grinding of E. coli-tainted leftover trim from steaks and roasts — and fat and unmarketable meat waste purchased from U.S. plants and foreign suppliers — is almost a fail-proof technique for mixing E. coli through the soon-to-be-burgers.

This blend cannot be doused with bug-killing ammonia, and E. coli bacteria survive refrigerator and freezer temperatures. So all too often, a bacteria-laced product is on the way to your neighborhood store and, ultimately, your grill or skillet. With it comes the consumer warning from industry and the government: “If you’re worried, cook the life out of your burgers.”

With this background, the importance of what I reported  today on AOL News may make a bit more sense

For years. many food safety experts have been voicing concern over six strains of E. coli that was sickening, and sometimes killing more than 30,000 people a year.  These illnesses came, not from the much-publicized E. coli O157, but strains that USDA refused to outlaw or even consider dangerous.

Repeatedly, the agency said USDA repeatedly said that “There is no indication that these strains are a health problem for anyone.”

But. last week,  a different message was conveyed in a second-story office in the USDA building overlooking the National Mall..

It was exactly a month and a day after Dr. Elisabeth Hagen was sworn in as the USDA’s undersecretary for food safety. She quietly convened a meeting in her office with a physician, a lawyer, a Montana meat packer and the mother of a boy who died after eating at a fast food restaurant. The four, each in his or her own way, had worked passionately for years, prodding, cajoling and pleading that the agency demand that American meat producers ensure that they sold no beef containing six ignored strains of E. coli.

According to the visitors, Hagen told them she understood the danger of the unregulated pathogens and the harm they were doing. But it was also understood that it would be a difficult task because the meat industry would fight hard against the safety improvements, which would cost it dearly to deliver safer beef to consumers. Difficult fight or not, most left the meeting believing it was a battle that Hagen was willing to lead.

For the whole story, actually, three of them, check out what I wrote on AOL News today.

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

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.

Hundreds of studies – by both government and academic researchers – have shown that exposure of animals to low doses of BPA has been linked to cancer, abnormal behavior, diabetes and heart disease, infertility, developmental and reproductive harm, obesity, and early puberty, a known risk factor for breast cancer. Also, BPA exposure is particularly of concern for pregnant women, for babies, and for children.

“It takes as little as one serving of canned foods to expose a person to levels of BPA that have been shown to cause harm in laboratory animals.  This is especially troublesome if the person eating the canned foods is pregnant, because fetuses are especially vulnerable to BPA’s effects,” reports  co-author Bobbi Chase Wilding, organizing director of Clean New York, told AOL News.

The researchers warned that in addition to the risk of BPA in canned food, people are also exposed to the chemical composite in common products like polycarbonate water and baby bottles, 5-gallon water coolers, and printer inks, toners and thermal receipt paper (used by most gas stations and supermarkets) where BPA can rub off paper onto hands and get into mouths.

What you pay for the food and where you buy it appears to have no impact on the presence of the contaminant. This study also shows that BPA levels in canned food cannot be predicted by the price of the product, the quality, or relative nutrition value of the product, or where it was purchased.

In related action, Sen. Dianne Feinstein today repeated her demand for a ban on BPA in food and beverage containers. The California Democrat wants the ban included in the Food Safety Modernization Act, a bill moving through the Senate that looks at important external food contaminants like E.coli and salmonella, but not at packaging additives like BPA.

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.