This is a story I did today for Scripps Howard News Service

Every day, millions of Americans are likely putting something in their mouths that contains a substance called “meat glue” by critics of the food industryThe additive with the unappetizing nickname is used to produce meats found in supermarkets, in local delis and in restaurants ranging from fast food to fine dining. Even vegetarian food isn’t exempt.

Marketing consultants and food scientists estimate — because no company will discuss sales figures– that anywhere from 11 to 35 percent of all packaged and sliced ham, beef, chicken, fish, pizza toppings and other deli products are enhanced, restructured or molded using the meat glue, which is made from one of two brands of protein adhesive.

Even though federal laws require labeling, a spot-check of meat purveyors and restaurant suppliers by Scripps Howard News Service found that almost no companies listed the substances among their products’ ingredients.

The website for Ajinomoto, one of the larger makers of meat glue, shows what happenes when strips of beef are molded into an expensive-looking tenderloin.

Further, 10 meat and cold-cut processors and fast-food outlets — including Tyson Food, Cargill Meats, McDonald’s and Arby’s — were contacted by Scripps, but all declined to discuss whether they used transglutaminase or blood-extract products, saying either that it was proprietary, or, if they did use them, it need not be reported because the binders were considered a “processing aid.”

Like the “pink slime” used as a cheap ground-beef filler, meat glue is not considered a health risk by federal food watchdogs. Nonetheless, consumers recently reacted with revulsion to the presence of pink-slime filler in ground meat, leading, ultimately, to the closing of three processing plants and the removal of the additive from some restaurants’ fare.

Whether or not meat glue will meet the same fate, the lack of disclosure is the same in critics’ eyes. “For decades, the meat industry has conveniently operated in the dark, not sharing the dirty details of their practices with the public, while the federal government looked the other way,” Michele Simon, a policy consultant for the Center for Food Safety, told Scripps.

“But now, consumers are demanding to know the truth about what they are eating. We need more transparency in a food system that puts profits before people.”

One of the two most common forms of meat glue used in the U.S. is Activa, a white powder form of a natural coagulant-like enzyme called transglutaminase. (The popular yogurt Activia has no connections to Activa.)

The other is Fibrimex, which is made of enzymes extracted from pig or beef blood by a process developed in the Netherlands. Both products were designed and sold, their advertising says, to bond pieces of protein or irregularly shaped meat so it can be cut and cooked evenly by the food-service industry.

Food scientists tell Scripps that the two cold-binding agents are used to reduce the use of sodium phosphate, sodium alginate, carrageenan, sodium caseinate and other chemicals that had been used for decades to form and mold meat.

Not knowing that Activa and Fibrimex are in certain foods can present problems for people with religious and dietary beliefs or special needs.

How are Jews, Muslims and others who don’t eat pork products going to know whether there are pig-blood extracts holding together their chicken or fish pieces? What about vegans and vegetarians who might not want to eat “meatless” hot dogs, sausage and luncheon meats containing bovine blood or the fermented enzymes?

“There may be economic adulteration going on here, and the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) or the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) needs to look at whether laws are being violated,” says Tony Corbo, legislative representative for the national consumer group Food & Water Watch. “We are especially appalled that certain consumers’ religious beliefs may be unknowingly violated because food manufacturers are hiding what goes into the production of these binding agents.”

Meat glue first drew attention last year when an Australian video went viral on YouTube. It showed a meat specialist sprinkling white powder on pieces of fat, gristle and other waste beef, covering it in plastic wrap and chilling it. Hours later, the pieces had transformed into a long log of solid meat, which was then cut into expensive-looking tenderloins.

These cold-bonding agents are being used at the top and bottom of the food chain, from fine chefs at the high-end of the culinary workforce to cut-rate meat purveyors at the other.

And Scripps has found that the meat-glue additives are used not just in beef, but in thousands of other food products throughout the retail and industry marketplaces.

For instance, a partial list of uses for transglutaminase can be found on the website of Hela Spice Canada, a subsidiary of a major German food-additive and ingredient supplier, Hela, that exports to the U.S., and 10 other countries (http://www.helacanada.ca).

The site says different formulations of Activa can be used for fast-food chicken nuggets and boneless wings, fish sticks, boneless barbecue ribs, roast beef, pastrami, turkey roast and hams.

Major pizza chains buy the additive for toppings including pepperoni, Italian sausage, bacon crumble and salami, according to the website.

Supermarket-brand roasts, sausages, kabobs, hams, poultry pieces, pork, beef and many high-end-appearing cuts of beef and pork contain it as well. The website also emphasizes what food-design consultants say is a growing use of transglutaminase in vegetarian meat substitutes.

Walter Knecht, president of Hela Spice Canada, declined to answer any questions from Scripps. He referred all inquiries to transglutaminase maker Ajinomoto, a Japanese company with offices in Chicago, which said in a statement that it discloses all ingredients.

Interviews by Scripps with more than 60 industry or academic food scientists, physicians and government-safety regulators revealed other, unanticipated uses for the meat-glue additives. These include imitation seafood, gyro meat, hundreds of different baked goods, tofu, pasta, vegetables, cereals and dairy products such as yogurt. And, they add, that use is growing. But, as with pink slime, you won’t find meat glue on a list of ingredients.

Over the past five months, Scripps checked more than 130 meats and deli products in Seattle, Milwaukee, Omaha and Denver that food scientists believed contained the adhesives mixtures. Only four of them — all bolognas — had the word “enzymes” on the ingredient label. But “enzymes,” “transglutaminase,”        “thrombin” and “blood byproducts” were not listed anywhere on the labels for the remainder.

“You’ve got smart consumers shopping today with a (magnifying) glass in their hand,” said a marketing consultant for a small, but high-end specialty-meat company who did not want her name used because of the sensitivity of the subject. “No one is going to list any ingredients that will turn the shopper off, especially enzymes and pig blood. And there’s no one to force them to list it.”

Government regulations are precise in how the public is supposed to be told when and what ingredients are added to food offered for sale in stores.

Regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service list specific words that must appear on ingredient labels of products containing transglutaminase or the animal-blood extracts fibrinogen and thrombin.

In 2000, when federal officials first granted permission for Ajinomoto to market the French-made transglutaminase in the United States, the USDA required that the company tell consumers they were buying “beef tenderloin formed with water and transglutaminase enzyme,” according to USDA and FDA documents obtained by Scripps.

Ajinomoto balked and said it wanted to use words that didn’t mention transglutaminase. Instead, it wanted to say its products were “formed” or “re-formed” or made with enzymes as part of the product name, such as “formed beef tenderloin.”

Ajinomoto, the company that in 1901 developed the sometimes-controversial flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate, or MSG, got its way and the USDA approved use of the less-foreboding language.

Similar precise language was created for the blood-product maker Fibrimex to use on its products.

Rick Young, the regional sales manager of Fibrimex maker FX Technologies in its Fremont, Neb., office, gave Scripps a copy of page 14 of USDA’s labeling bible, the Food Standard and Labeling Policy Book.

The book required the use of phrases such as “Fibrinogen and Thrombin Plasma Protein” or ” Bacon Wrapped Beef Tenderloin Steak Formed with Beef Fibrinogen and Thrombin.”

Both FX Technologies and Ajinomoto say they properly disclose the ingredients of their additives to their food-manufacturer customers. And they said it is their understanding that manufacturers are correctly labeling their products.

In a statement last week, the nutrition and health division of Ajinomoto said that all meat to which transglutaminase has been added is properly labeled, as government regulations require.

“This is a requirement. There is no ‘secret’,” the statement said.

On May 4, Fibrimex’s Young said much the same.

“Those companies that use Fibrimex are well aware of what the government labeling regulations demand. There are USDA inspectors in everyone’s plant, so there’s no reason to believe that anything is being done improperly,” Young said.

However, at the Institute of Food Technologists conference in New Orleans last June, Ajinomoto personnel repeatedly explained to potential customers that their company has no way of demanding or forcing users of its transglutaminase to follow FDA or USIS labeling laws.

(Andrew Schneider is Scripps Howard News Service senior public health correspondent. Contact him at investigate(at)me.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

True foodies can make our favorite subject the center of any discussion, but food (and lack thereof) really is at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The “Food Justice” movement is arguing loudly against the shameful reality that this rich country can’t seem to feed its working poor and destitute folks.

Agri-business has a seat at the fat-cat table, of course. (Mother Jones has some recent thoughts on those huge monopolies.)

Some foodies are focusing on the most basic of basics. Witness the SF Weekly blog post about “Top Five Foods to Bring to Occupiers.”

The Food Watchdog Staff begs to differ with that blog’s notion of condiments as crucial to keeping the Wall Street challengers happy and well fed. An army moves on its stomach, and all that, so we’re thinking portable protein (turkey jerky; tuna in a bag; cheese, nuts…) as well as the life-necessities of water and chocolate, of course. (Carbs are easy: bread. Or, Rice Chex for the gluten-hating marchers.)

The whole discussion of the haves-and-have-nots gets very clear when considered in the form of the map shown here. (Created by Think Progress.) Whether you’re viewing it with money, food, healthcare or other commodities in mind, it whacks you over the head with the point.

–Food Watchdog Staff

Not all the activist furor is about Wall Street. The prospect of genetically engineered corn is fueling protests from food-watch groups and regular ol’ citizen-eaters alike.

As of last week, more than 260,000 people had signed a new petition protesting Monsanto’s first genetically engineered corn for general consumption. (Meaning that such produce is already in processed food, and this new stuff would go right from field to your plate. And it would come from the company with the biggest share of the country’s corn market.)

Like the Occupy movement, this issue is bringing groups together to make noise and get recognition. A Reuters story says those pushing major retailers to boycott Monsanto’s GE sweet corn include the Center for Environmental Health, the Center for Food Safety, and Food & Water Watch. General Mills and Trader Joe’s have reportedly climbed on board.

Corn on the cob becomes corn from the lab.

Again, like the Occupy crowd, opponents to genetically modified food come at the issue from all angles. Some worry that the foods will cause a surge in allergies or other health issues. Others point out that the long-term effects of GMO food are simply not known yet. One of the arguments for the GMO corn is that the engineering can create resistance to drought, or to insects that typically damage or destroy crops. But some of those very bugs are back in the Monsanto cornfields, and experts worry that the process inevitably creates “super bugs” that will require ever stronger pesticides. Still others have ethical and religious concerns about gene splicing, period.

The issue is not as black and white as some of us would like. Andrew Schneider (of the Food Watchdog) pointed out more than two years ago: “The scientists at Japan’s National Institute for Agrobiological Sciences have developed a transgenic rice plant that has been genetically engineered to fight allergies to Japanese cedar pollen.” Schneider has also noted the difficulty in determining which foods are genetically altered. Labels don’t help as a rule.

One more thing is common to Occupy Wall Street and the anti-Monsanto movements. More people will learn about the issues, and demand yet more information. That’s good.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

Warehouses of the largest honey packers in the U.S. are piled high with green drums of Asian honey, most laundered from China.  It flows through the ports of New York, Long Beach and Los Angeles, Calif., Charleston. S.C., Houston and others mostly unhampered. FDA has the laws needed to keep adulterated honey off store shelves, but does little, honey industry says.

The following story was published Monday by Food Safety News

 WASHINGTON – A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. A Food Safety News investigation has documented that millions of pounds of honey banned as unsafe in dozens of countries are being imported and sold here in record quantities.

And the flow of Chinese honey continues despite assurances from the Food and Drug Administration and other federal officials that the hundreds of millions of pounds reaching store shelves were authentic and safe following the widespread arrests and convictions of major smugglers over the last two years.

Experts interviewed by Food Safety News say some of the largest and most long-established U.S. honey packers are knowingly buying mislabeled, transshipped or possibly altered honey so they can sell it cheaper than those companies who demand safety, quality and rigorously inspected honey.

“It’s no secret that the honey smuggling is being driven by money, the desire to save a couple of pennies a pound,” said Richard Adee, who is the Washington Legislative Chairman of the American Honey Producers Association.

“These big packers are still using imported honey of uncertain safety that they know is illegal because they know their chances of getting caught are slim,” Adee told FSN.

Food safety investigators from the European Union barred all shipments of honey from India because of the presence of lead and illegal animal antibiotics. Further, they found an even larger amount of honey apparently had been concocted without the help of bees, made from artificial sweeteners and then extensively filtered to remove any proof of contaminants or adulteration or indications of precisely where the honey actually originated.

An examination by FSN of international and government shipping tallies, customs documents and interviews with some of North America’s top honey importers and brokers confirmed the rampant honey laundering and that a record amount of the Chinese honey was being purchased by major U.S. packers.

FSN contacted Sue Bee Honey, the nation’s oldest and largest honey packer and seller, for a response to these allegations and to learn where it gets its honey.  The co-op did not respond to repeated calls and emails for comment. Calls and emails to other major honey sellers also were unreturned

EU Won’t Accept Honey from India

Much of this questionable honey was officially banned beginning June 2010 by the 27 countries of the European Union and others. But on this side of the ocean, the FDA checks few of the thousands of honey shipments arriving through 22 American ports each year.

According to FDA data, between January and June, just 24 honey shipments were stopped from entering the country. The agency declined to say how many loads are inspected and by whom.

However, during that same period, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that almost 43 million pounds of honey entered the U.S. Of that, the Department of Commerce said 37.7 million pounds came from India, the same honey that is banned in the EU because it contained animal medicine and lead and lacked the proper paperwork to prove it didn’t come from China.

“There are still millions of pounds of transshipped Chinese honey coming in the U.S. and it’s all coming now from India and Vietnam and everybody in the industry knows that,” said Elise Gagnon, president of Odem International, a worldwide trading house that specializes in bulk raw honey.

The FDA says it has regulations prohibiting foods banned in other countries from entering the U.S. However, the agency told FSN this month that it “would not know about honey that has been banned from other countries …”

Adee called the FDA’s response “absurd.” He said the European ban against Indian honey is far from a secret.

“Why are we the dumping ground of the world for something that’s banned in all these other countries?” asked Adee, who, with 80,000 bee colonies in five states, is the country’s largest honey producer.

“We’re supposed to have the world’s safest food supply but we’re letting in boatloads of this adulterated honey that all these other countries know is contaminated and FDA does nothing.”

The food safety agency said that it’s doing the best it can with existing resources and will do more when the newly passed Food Safety Modernization Act is up and running.

Where Is Our Honey Coming From?

 The U.S. consumes about 400 million pounds of honey a year – 1.3 pounds a person. About 35 percent is consumed in homes, restaurants and institutions. The remaining 65 percent is bought by industry for use in cereals, baked goods, sauces, beverages and hundreds of different processed foods.

A screen capture of Import Genius' database showing just a quick peek at the hundreds of shipments arriving from India. © photo The Food Watchdog

However, the USDA says U.S. beekeepers can only supply about a 48 percent of what’s needed here.  The remaining 52 percent comes from 41 other countries.

Import Genius, a private shipping intelligence service, searched its databases of all U.S. Customs import data for Food Safety News and provided a telling breakdown:

The U.S. imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months.

• About 48 million pounds came from trusted and usually reliable suppliers in Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Uruguay.
• Almost 60 percent of what was imported – 123 million pounds – came from Asian countries – traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.

“This should be a red flag to FDA and the federal investigators. India doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity – enough bees – to produce 45 million pounds of honey. It has to come from China,” said Adee, who also is a past president of the American Honey Producers Association.

Why Is Chinese Honey Considered Dangerous?

Chinese honeymakers began using various illegal methods to conceal the origin of their honey beginning in about 2001. That’s when the U.S. Commerce Department imposed a stiff tariff – as much as $1.20 a pound — on Chinese honey to dissuade that country from dumping its dirt-cheap product on the American market and forcing hundreds of U.S. beekeepers out of the business.

About the same time, Chinese beekeepers saw a bacterial epidemic of foulbrood disease race through their hives at wildfire speed, killing tens of millions of bees. They fought the disease with several Indian-made animal antibiotics, including chloramphenicol. Medical researchers found that children given chloramphenicol as an antibiotic are susceptible to DNA damage and carcinogenicity. Soon after, the FDA banned its presence in food.

“We need imported honey in this country.  But, what we don’t need is circumvented honey, honey that is mislabeled as to country of origin, honey that is contaminated with antibiotics or heavy metal,” said Ronald Phipps, co-chairman of the International Committee for Promotion of Honey and Health and head of the major honey brokerage firm CPNA International.

Heavy Metal Contamination

The Chinese have many state-of-the-art processing plants but their beekeepers don’t have the sophistication to match. There are tens of thousands of tiny operators spread from the Yangtze River and coastal Guangdong and Changbai to deep inland Qinghai province.  The lead contamination in some honey has been attributed to these mom-and-pop vendors who use small, unlined, lead-soldered drums to collect and store the honey before it is collected by the brokers for processing.

The amount of chloramphenicol found in honey is miniscule. Nevertheless, public health experts say it can cause a severe, even fatal reaction — aplastic anemia — in about one out of 30,000 people.

European health authorities found lead in honey bought from India in early 2010. A year later, the Indian Export Inspection Council tested 362 samples of honey being exported and reported finding lead and at least two antibiotics in almost 23 percent of the test samples.

The discovery of lead in the honey presents a more serious health threat.

“The presence of heavy metals is a totally different story, because heavy metals are accumulative, they are absorbed by organs and are retained. This is especially hazardous for children,” Phipps told the food news site.

All the bans, health concerns and criticism of Indian honey hasn’t slowed the country’s shipping of honey to the U.S. and elsewhere. In February, India’s beekeepers and its government agricultural experts said that because of weather and disease in some colonies, India’s honey crop would be late and reduced by up to 40 percent.

Yet two months later, on April 15 in Ludhiana, officials of Kashmir Apiaries Exports and Little Bee Group, India’s largest honey exporters, posed for newspaper photographers in front of “two full honey trains” carrying 180 20-foot cargo carriers with a record 8.8 million pounds of honey headed for the export ports.

“They’re clearly transshipping honey from China and I can’t believe that they are so brazen about it to put it right on the front page of a newspaper,” honey producer Adee said.

Federal criminal investigator samples one of hundreds of drums of Asian honey that flows through thePport of Tacoma, Wash. © photo by The Food Watchdog

Data received by FSN from an international broker in India on Friday showed that within the last month 16 shipments – more than 688,000 pounds – of honey went from the Chinese port of Nansha in Guangzhou China to Little Bee Honey in India.  The U.S. gurus of international shipping documents – Import Genius – scanned its database and found that just last week six shipments of the honey went from Little Bee to the port of Los Angeles. The honey had the same identification numbers of the honey shipped from China.

Government investigators in the U.S. and Europe and customs brokers in India told FSN that previous successful criminal investigations had proven that the Chinese honey suppliers and their brokers are masterful at falsifying shipping documents.

Each of the shipments – whether from China or India – bore an identical FDA inspection number. However, FDA’s Division of Import Operations did not respond to requests for information on how and where it issued that FDA number.

Food Safety News left several messages for the Little Bee Group to discuss the source of their honey and how they were breaking records when the rest of India’s honey producers were months behind schedule. None of the phone messages or emails were returned.

Other major Indian honey exporters insist that India gets no honey from China. However, Liu Peng-fei and Li Hai-yan of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences disagree. In a scientific study of the impact the global financial crisis is having on China’s honey industry, the apiculture scientists wrote that to avoid the “punitive import tariffs” Chinese enterprises “had to export to the United States via India or Malaysia in order to avoid high tariffs…”

Why Hasn’t Smuggling Stopped?

The massive honey laundering scams that plagued the U.S. for more than a decade – the transshipment of Chinese honey to a second country before being reshipped to the U.S. — were presumably given a deathblow over the past two years.

During that period, Justice Department lawyers and Department of Homeland Security and FDA investigators launched a series of indictments and arrests of 23 German, Chinese, Taiwanese and American corporate officials and their nine international companies.

They were charged with conspiracy to smuggle more than $70 million worth of Chinese honey into the U.S. by falsely declaring that the honey originated from countries other than China. That allowed them to avoid paying stiff anti-dumping charges imposed on China.

It was an impressive series of complex busts spanning three continents, and instant fodder for a great whodunit novel. But, according to some of North America’s largest producers and importers of honey, the arrests bombed as a deterrent.

“There are still millions of pounds of transshipped Chinese honey coming into the U.S.A. and it’s all coming now from India and Vietnam. Everybody in the industry knows that,” said Odem International’s Gagnon.

When it comes to honey laundering, the crooks are always trying to stay one step ahead of the criminal investigators.

For example, when customs agents discovered that China usually shipped its honey in blue steel drums, the exporters quickly painted the drums green.

It took investigators a while to learn that often — while the drums were in port or en route at sea — the Chinese shuffled drum labels and phony paperwork showing country of origin as places that didn’t have an onerous anti-dumping tariff. The Russian Honey Federation blew the whistle on the Chinese relabeling millions of pounds as coming from Russia.

After that scam became known, the felons then shipped Chinese honey to countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and even Australia. There the honey was repacked, authentic local documents were issued and the honey was shipped on to the U.S. or elsewhere.

Another favorite con among Chinese brokers was to mix sugar water, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, jaggery, barley malt sweetener or other additives with a bit of actual honey. In recent years, many shippers have eliminated the honey completely and just use thickened, colored, natural or chemical sweeteners labeled as honey.

However, sophisticated analysis that will match the pollen in honey to flowers from a specific geographic region is available at just two or three laboratories around the world.  There are also simpler, less expensive tests to detect the telltale presence of commercial sweeteners and other adulterants that are more readily available.

A laboratory in Bremen, Germany, founded a half century ago by German beekeepers, can accurately scan honey samples for flower pollen. There is only one expert in the U.S. known to analyze pollen in honey to determine where it was actually grown and that would be at the Palynology Laboratory at Texas A&M. The lab was created and is run by Vaughn Bryant, a forensic palynologist and Professor of Anthropology.

Melissopalynology or pollen analysis has been used for years by geologists seeking evidence of ancient coastal areas – often sites of major oil deposits. Scientists tracing the origins of the Shroud of Turin have identified 61 different pollens on the cloth that could only have come from around Jerusalem.

Forensic scientists have used pollen identification to help solve murder, rapes, kidnapping and at least one espionage case. Now, at least in the labs in Texas and Germany, melissopalynologists use pollen to determine – with great accuracy – the geographic area where the bees foraged for the nectar.

A handful of laboratories in the world can test honey for pollen and determine its country of origin. © photo by The Food Watchdog

“If they find, for example, pollen from flowers that grow in northern latitudes – like China – but it’s found in honey ostensibly produced in tropical countries – like India, Vietnam, Malaysia and the like – you know something’s rotten or illegal,” said CPNA International’s Phipps, who also produces a quarterly, international intelligence report that monitors the country-by-country supply of honey and everyone’s exports.

To avoid detection by concerned purchasers or criminal investigators, some Chinese producers in state-of-the-art processing plants pump the alleged honey, heated and under high pressure, through elaborate ceramic filters. This ultra-filtration removes or conceals all floral fingerprints and indicators of added sweeteners or contaminants.

“The Chinese have refined methods of masking their contaminated product by ultra-filtration so their honey seems perfect. But it’s not honey anymore. There’s no color.  There’s no flavor. There’s nothing.  So you take this perfect product, which could be confused with honey, and you blend it with real Indian honey,” Gagnon told Food Safety News.

“Everyone avoids tariffs because government agents cannot test to prove it’s from China.”

The FDA says it has sent a letter to Industry stating that the agency does not consider ultra-filtered honey to be honey.

“We have not halted any importation of honey because we have yet to detect ultra-filtered honey. If we do detect ultra-filtered honey we will refuse entry,” FDA press officer Tamara Ward told FSN.

“FDA is just not looking” was the answer that most honey brokers offered. They added that FDA doesn’t want to find it because then the agency would have to test for it, something they are incapable of doing in its existing laboratories.

Honey experts worry that new technologies will make detection of adulterants even more difficult.

At June’s conference of the Institute of Food Technologists in New Orleans, there were hundreds of Chinese vendors working in small clusters beneath bright red banners. They offered for sale almost any spice, food-processing substance or additives a food processor might want and promises of concocting anything else they could dream of. “All FDA approved,” they emphasized to potential clients.

One salesman quickly jerked back his business card when a reporter pulled out a tape recorder to capture the man’s promises offering a “nanoparticle sweetener for honey that cannot be detected.”

Does the FDA Care?

The U.S. Departments of Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have dollar and cents issues to worry about because hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes and anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese imports are circumvented by the honey laundering.

“These honey crimes are not a Republican or Democratic, Liberal or Conservative issue.  The country is being ripped off of millions and millions,” Phipps said.

Recent news releases by the border patrol and the FDA say they have developed an anti-smuggling strategy to identify and prevent smuggled foods from entering the United States and posing a threat to national security and consumer safety.

But at the field level, investigators with the two agencies and an agent with ICE’s Commercial Fraud Unit told Food Safety News that the cooperation is more on paper then in practice and that the FDA continues to be the weak link. They say the FDA either doesn’t have the resources to properly do the job or is unwilling to commit them.

ICE and the border patrol can and do go after the honey launderers by enforcing the anti-dumping and tariff violation laws. But protecting consumers from dangerous honey, identifying it as adulterated and therefore illegal for importation, falls to the FDA. And many of its enforcement colleagues say the food safety agency doesn’t see this as a priority.

A Justice Department lawyer told Food Safety News that the FDA has all the legal authority and obligation it needs to halt the importation of tainted honey. He cited two sections of the agency’s regulations defining when food products are considered “adulterated.”

The regulations say: “Food is adulterated if it bears or contains a poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health” and “damage or inferiority has been concealed.”

Those two factors pretty much sum up the health concerns that many have with the smuggled honey. But the honey industry and Congress can’t get the FDA to even come up with a legal definition of what honey is.

Eight years ago, America’s beekeepers and some honey packers petitioned FDA to issue an official definition of honey. Their concern was how to determine whether honey is bogus if there is no official standard to measure it against. The FDA did nothing.

Last Nov. 15, senators asked the food safety agency for the same thing. Again, nothing.

On Wednesday, two members of the Senate Committee on Appropriations tried once more.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and John Hoeven (R-ND) urged the FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to issue the official definition.

Calling the lack of regulations “a food safety concern” Gillibrand said a national standard of identity for honey is needed “to prevent unscrupulous importers from flooding the market with misbranded honey products…”

An investigator in FDA’s import section explained the agency’s refusal to develop an official definition: “If we had an official description of honey then FDA would have to inspect everything we’re importing to ensure it’s legal and that’s the last thing we want to do,” he said, but would not allow his name to be used because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

How Do You Stop The Illegal Flow?

 Gagnon and four other major players in the honey industry have formed a voluntary group called True Source Honey.  They hope it will eventually expand into an international, industry-wide program to certify the origin and quality of honey.

“We need an origin traceability program, a professional audit of both the exporters and the packers so those buying and selling honey can ensure its authenticity and quality,” said Gagnon, who is the group’s vice chairman.

Meanwhile, it’s rumored that the feds are increasing their surveillance of the large U.S. importers and not too soon, Adee and others say.

Adee likens the honey laundering to a huge auto chop shop, where the police occasionally arrest the low-level car thieves but others pop up to continue supplying the criminal operation, which authorities never go after.

“That’s what’s happening here,” Adee explained. “ICE and the other investigators have arrested a handful of the middle men, the brokers who supply the honey packers, but haven’t gone after the big operators buying the phony foreign honey.”

Adee and others interviewed say there are 12 major honey packers in the U.S. and four or five that are involved with the bulk of illegal trade.

“We know who they are,” he said. “Everyone in the industry knows. If these packers are allowed to continue buying this possibly tainted but clearly illegal smuggled honey, the importers will always find a way to get it to them.”

It wasn’t New York City inspectors nor the Food and Drug Administration that found that the nation’s best-known deli was selling lobster salad without the lobster, but a reporter from Cajun country.

I’m not the only one who has traveled hundreds of miles to get to Zabar’s, the Manhattan Mecca for all deli lovers.

The aromas from it’s corned beef and pastrami; smoked salmon, sturgeon and whitefish; fish salads and pickles; and some of New York’s finest bagels, breads and pastries permeate the 20,000 square-foot edifice on Broadway and justify repeated visits.

Zabar's is wonderland for foodies and a Mecca for deli zealots © photo by The Food Watchdog

This store is so well known that when owner Saul Zabar finally broke with tradition in the all-male bastion and permitted a woman to slice the precious Nova lox, it made national newspapers and network TV news.

But now they’ve gotten caught trying to pass off crayfish, a Cajun staple, for lobster in their popular salad. In fact, it turns out that Zabar’s has been selling the misidentified crustacean salad for about 20 years, perhaps more, Zabar told reporters.

Zabar insisted he wasn’t being dishonest and directed the multitude of journalists laying siege to the Upper West End deli to Wikipedia where, as he told the New York Times, “you will find that crawfish in many parts of the country is referred to as lobster.”

This culinary conundrum can be credited to or blamed on Doug MacCash, a vacationing reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

In his blog earlier this month, MacCash wrote: “In New York City a lucky crayfish can become lobster,” and tells of standing in the checkout line at Zabar’s where “tiny tubs of lobster salad in the refrigerator case caught my eye.”

Lobster salad on a bagel — why not? he thought.  “It was delicious, but the pink-orange tails seemed small and somehow familiar,” he wrote.

He was neither an investigative reporter nor a food writer but a sharp enough journalist to know how to read the ingredients on the label: “wild freshwater crayfish, mayonnaise, celery, salt and sugar.” It read.

“Wild freshwater crayfish? Really? At $16.95 per pound?”  he wrote.

Crawfish. Photo by Louisiana Seafood Council

The only other place you might see the humble freshwater crustacean at a similar price would be at a high-end French restaurant, where it’s called écrevisse.

The Louisiana Crawfish Co. will sell you a pound boiled for $6.95.

When I was in New Orleans in June, I took a friend – a food safety investigator – out for dinner. While I went for Ya Ya Gumbo, he ordered an overflowing platter of smoking hot crayfish and spent the next hour sucking the heads off the miniture lobster-looking creatures and loving every minute of it.

“It’s all about getting the real flavor from these,” he mumbled,  waving a hot sauce-covered limp crayfish. “But my wife – who’s from Boston – would kick me out of the house if I did this at home,” he said.

The all-powerful Maine Lobster Council wasted no time getting Zabar on the phone.

Dane Somers, the council’s executive director and the chief protector of Maine’s finest told the owner that FDA regulations say that mislabeling food products is a big deal.

She told the Bangor Daily News that the FDA permits the use of the term “lobster” only for the Homarus species, which, she said, includes the European and American lobsters, not other lobster-like species such as langostino or crayfish.

Zabar says he is changing the name of the salad to be more transparent to consumers. When I called today, someone who said he was “just a manager” told The Food Watchdog that “it’s still being discussed – and way too much.” All he knows is that it won’t have lobster on the label “unless there’s lobster in the salad.”

By the way, those two separate spellings of the Louisiana crustacean are not a mistake. Turns out the small but tasty critters go by several names: crayfish, crawfish, crawdads and mud puppies, among the most popular.

There’s some dangerous grocery carts out there. Who knew?

I learned this earlier this week when I tried to roll a grocery cart from a Winco to a parking lot outside of the store’s boundaries. The Winconians have fitted carts with little sensors that jam on the brakes once you roll over a barrier. This technology isn’t new, but they’ve perfected it. Trust me.

I understand why this is an issue for urban stores, where grocery carts are put to use by countless homeless people. But this was in the ‘burbs. If you push a cart up a residential street here, you would be in a psychiatric lockup by sundown. We’ve got a no-tolerance policy for anything too odd.

But, back to Winco.

That cart screeched to a halt like Road Runner in a cartoon. I have the bruised rib to prove it.

Once I got the groceries out of the stalled cart and into my car (An ugly and involved process), I went into the store to get the lowdown. “Really? The carts just stop?” was the reaction of the first store employee I approached.  She suggested I try another cart to see if the same thing happened. I decided to pass on that fun and came right home to research this phenom.

Photo from Inhabit.com

The theft of carts costs millions a year. People use them to wheel around their belongings of course, but apparently they also use them for barbecue pits and furniture.

I know you will join me in my relief at knowing that there is an acronym involved.  In this case, “CAPS” which stands for “cart anti-theft protection system.” Usually this works the way my cart did: Try to roll out of bounds and WHAM! Brakes are on.

The technical explanation: The carts have special boots with transmitters that emit a very, very quiet call for help when they are out of their comfort zone. A cart cannot cry for help and roll at the same time.

(This is a variation of what my mother, of blessed memory, used to call “not able to shit or go blind,” which is crude version of “can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”)

Here’s the thing that really tells you these people mean business: Once the cart has sent the danger yelp out to the electronic home base, it’s all over. The cart cannot go into reverse either. It can only turn in circles, and if that isn’t a metaphor for a life of crime, well, I don’t know what is. A handheld unlocking device is used to start ‘er up again.

This being America and all, there is a lobby against these carts, which apparently have been known to tip over without warning.

Just for laughs, I called a couple of stores and asked how they prevent cart theft. The answers:

1 – We have tall sticks attached to the side of the cart and it won’t go through the average house door or into a vehicle. (Do people really put these things in a car? I can barely get drycleaning into the backseat.)

2 – We have cement posts outside the store walkway that are a little narrower than the carts. (That “little narrower” part seems mean. You just know that people take a run at those and get humiliated. )

3 – We hunt the thieves down and beat them. (Obviously that was not Whole Foods.)

One of the managers asked why I was asking. When I explained about my near-whiplash experience, she said she had to go and hung up.

No worries, honey — the Winco people are holding the bag on this one.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

It’s almost National Ice Cream Month, for which we can thank the late Mr. Reagan.

Apparently he still had some energy left after deregulating air travel, making sure it would never again be comfortable or reliable.

(A quick aside: Yes, I realize Carter should get blamed too. And, yes, I know that the issue is much more complicated and that it was really “partial deregulation.” All you experts who want to argue, just back off. This is humor. I get to make things up. Plus: the late Mr. Reagan was not a thin-skinned type like you.)

From DisplayFakeFoods.com

The folks at Cowabunga Ice Cream are on the case, beating everyone else (even Ben & Jerry) and grabbing the bumper of the ice cream public-relations truck as it pulls out.

The Cowabungians sent The Food Watchdog a press release full of amazing ice cream facts.

There’s the usual, always shocking average intake number: Americans eat 23.2 (yes, twenty-three-point-two) quarts of ice cream, sherbet and the like…a year.

Even if you eat diet frozen treats,  that would be impressive: 185 Weight Watchers Giant Latte Ice Cream Bars, for example.

There are other factoids too, direct from the International Ice Cream Association:

Sunday is the big day for ice-cream purchases. (See Matthew 80:2—”And on the seventh day, He finally had a good time.”)

The most popular flavor in America is vanilla. (And we wonder why Europeans look down on us?)

The biggest ice-cream eating cohort is under 12 or over 45. (Well, duh. Either not on or already off the marriage market.)

But the best, most useful fact is this: The average number of licks to eat an ice-cream cone is….drum roll, please…..50.

They had me right until this number. I mean, come on, who can make an ice cream cone last that long? Probably the same people who eat mints, Lifesavers and Tootsie Pops without biting into them.

Anyway, thank you Mr. President. For making July National Ice Cream Month and  July 17, 2011, National Ice Cream Day. I will think of you with more kindness the next time I am traveling from Denver to New York by going through Dallas.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

]]> http://thefoodwatchdog.com/06/food-news/national-ice-cream-month/feed/ 0 http://thefoodwatchdog.com/06/food-news/big-girls-small-kitchens-cookbook/ http://thefoodwatchdog.com/06/food-news/big-girls-small-kitchens-cookbook/#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:10:00 +0000 Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett http://thefoodwatchdog.com/?p=2153

Finding a unique niche in food writing is tricky.  Some of the best food scribes start with a narrow view, and along the way make it accessible to a much larger crowd.  Case in point: Big Girls Small Kitchen, the work of two 27-year-old women who created a concept they call “A Guide to Quarter Life Cooking.”

Phoebe Lapine and Cara Eisenpress started pushing the idea of cooking for those of tender years in 2008, a year after they graduated from Brown and Harvard. That was three years ago, which is a very long time ago when you’re in the first-quarter of life.

(You know you’re dealing with a young duo when they look back on their sources of  inspiration and say, “…our high school was very creative-minded.”)

But, ageist observations aside, the whole concept is a good one. Even with the barrage of foodie shows now being broadcast, there’s not been much useful info geared to younger adults who want to cook for friends, family and themselves. This isn’t Cooking for Young Dummies, it could more accurately be called Good Food Without Pretense.

One of my favorite innovations by Lapine and Eisenpress is a recipe categorizing system headed “When You’re Short Of…” followed by categories for Money, Time, Space, Skill.  It’s not unlike the Julia Child approach–take the nervous out of the prep and it all works better.

Now the Big Girls are getting attention from a much larger audience with the debut of their cookbook: In The Small Kitchen: 100 Recipes From Our Year of Cooking in the Real World (William Morrow/Harper Collins).

Watch out Mark Bittman, I may have a new foodie bookmark that comes before yours on my regular-reading list.