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

Honey woes out in the open

This country’s major importers of honey are taking a stand against illegal, often tainted product — a big change from their usual keep-it-quiet approach to this industry problem.

Andrew Schneider’s AOL News article on the subject reports that honey importers here are determined to get consumers involved.

“For more than three years, federal investigators have had hit-or-miss successes trying to intercept box-car-sized loads of illegally labeled honey coming into ports on both coasts and along the Gulf of Mexico,” he writes.

Stopping the imports is difficult because much of it is intentionally mislabeled to obscure its origins and avoid stiff tariffs. This bogus honey, especially that from China, is often contaminated with illegal animal antibiotics.

Schneider quotes industry leader Jill Clark, vice president of Dutch Gold Honey of Lancaster, Pa.

“We estimate that millions of pounds of Chinese honey continue to enter the U.S. from countries that do not have commercial honey businesses,” says Clark.”For example, countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Mongolia raise few bees and have no history of producing honey in commercial quantities…”

Schneider reports that a new site has been launched in order to alert consumers, retailers, food processors and others about the threat of inferior or dangerous honey. HonestHoney.com, is backed by Dutch Gold, Golden Heritage Foods of Hillsboro, Kan., Burleson’s Inc. from Waxahachie, Texas, and Odem International from Rosemere, Quebec, one of North America’s largest honey suppliers.

If you’re imagining a bounty on that little plastic bear in your cupboard, keep in mind most of the honey coming into the U.S. arrives in huge tankers or containers and goes straight into cereals, breads, cookies, yogurts, candies and other goods.

Even worse, Schneider reports, “investigators say that some food processors are prime — and often willing — targets for brokers trying to offload lower-cost, bogus honey.”

“Those behind the new initiative say the illegal honey sales have cost the U.S. up to $200 million in uncollected import duties in the past two years and threaten the domestic honey business and the future of America’s beekeeper,” writes Schneider.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

Yes, they taste like chicken but the world may be running out of frog legs.

I know you’ll be saddened to learn that you missed the second annual “save the frog” day. I’m embarrassed to admit that I also missed the first one.

But people in several countries are taking the fate of these jumpy green providers of frogs legs very seriously.

San Francisco-based restaurateur Gary Danko said last week he would stop serving frogs legs in the chi-chi eatery that bears his name.

The chef says his is the first restaurant in the world to remove frog legs from its menus for environmental reasons and he calls for other chefs to join him.

“Americans consume 20 percent of the world’s frog legs, and scientists estimate that over a hundred million frogs are taken out of the wild each year for food,” says Kerry Kriger, executive director of Save the Frogs.

The organization, which is comprised of environmental scientists, lawyers and activists, says the frog populations worldwide have been declining at unprecedented rates, and nearly one-third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction.

I talked to two menu creators and two food scientists from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Three said that one out of five of the world’s frogs being eaten in the U.S. seemed high. (But one, who said that the number of frog farms was increasing in North America, said she thought that number was low, but had no way of knowing for sure.)

Farming frogs isn’t any better than taking them out of the wild, Kriger said, and adds “farmed frogs are raised in unhealthy, crowded conditions, and are a source of a deadly chytrid fungus that has caused the extinction of up to 100 amphibian species worldwide.”

A study by scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, Wildlife Trust and three overseas institutions reported last year that frogs “are globally threatened by habitat loss, the wildlife trade and emerging diseases.”

An abundance of garlic and a quick sauté was not mentioned by researchers.

–Andrew Schneider

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.

Honey safety back in the news

That cute little bear-shaped honey bottle you grab off the supermarket shelf might not be as healthy as it looks.

For the details, see “Honey laundering bust highlights sticky problem,” a piece I wrote this week for AOL news.

–Andrew Schneider

Red hot…and recalled.

Remember last year’s epic recall of salmonella-tainted peanuts? The number of food manufacturers added to the recall list grew to more than a thousand over the following weeks because, it turned out, they were all buying goobers from Peanut Corporation of America.

Well, it may be happening again, but this time with red pepper.

Food safety cops from three federal agencies and the state of Rhode Island say they have linked salmonella-infected, Italian-style sausage and salami to a crushed red pepper sold by Wholesome Spice, a Brooklyn, N.Y., wholesale distributor.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 238 people in 44 states and Washington, D.C., have been sickened by the pathogen Salmonella Montevideo, which reportedly contaminated meat products made, packaged and sold by Daniele International Inc.

The poison-food specialists said that public health officials in multiple states and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta compared foods eaten by 41 ill people to another 41 with no sign of illness. This mini-epidemiological study identified Daniele meats as a possible source of illness and the pepper­–both black and red–as the host of the salmonella.

The Rhode Island producer, whose meats are sold under different brand names, has recalled about  1.5 million pounds of Italian-style sausage along with different types of ready-to-eat, pepper-coated meats.

But now, the CDC says the spice merchant is trying to recall 25-pound boxes of crushed red pepper it sold from April to last month due to possible Salmonella contamination.

The company has not said how much of the crushed red pepper was sold, but the 25-pound bulk packages, which were sold throughout the Northeast U.S., are often repackaged by others into consumer-size portions for home use or, like the peanuts, added to an unknown number of other commercially sold food products.

Late last month, Rhode Island officials reported finding Salmonella in two open containers of black pepper that Daniele had bought from Wholesome Spice. Two weeks later, officials found the pathogen in another load of black pepper but said this was purchased from a Chinese distributor.

--Andrew Schneider

Local berry makes good

The açaí berry, that gotta-have-it antioxidant, has a very different rep back home in the Brazilian Amazon.

Seth Kugel writes an enlightening piece on the purple fruit (say “ahh-sigh-EE”) in The New York Times. He reports that the açaí craze here amuses the locals, who have long been chowing down on the berries as cheap, filling meals.

He writes:

Açaí’s international reputation as an energy booster and diet aid tickles those who grew up with it as a caloric side dish.

“I find it funny,” said Letícia Galvão, a psychologist who was having a lunch of seafood and açaí with her husband and 1-year-old daughter at a restaurant called Point do Açaí. “Generally, when you have açaí here, you take a nap. There, it’s an energy drink.”

Check out the whole story, here.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

If it’s Parmesan, it must be from Parma.

Shaved or grated over almost anything or eaten by the chunk, the nutty-sweet, slightly salty, seductive flavor of Parmesan cheese, especially Parmigiano-Reggiano, is worth going to war over or at least, fighting in court to protect it.

The European Court of Justice seems to understand the value of the Italian delicacy that has been produced for more than eight centuries near Parma. This week it ruled that “Only cheeses bearing the protected designation of origin (PDO) ‘Parmigiano Reggiano’ can be sold under the name ‘Parmesan.”

The high court, located in Luxembourg, rejected the idea that “Parmesan” is a generic name undeserving of protection, reports Deutsche Welle.

Italian food producers are very concerned about counterfeiting of the food treasurers and agricultural officials believes that one out of every four Italian products sold abroad is an imitation, the Italian press reports.
The PDO system or “protected designation of origin,” gives the cheese the same protection benefiting other European products, such as French Camembert, which must come from Normandy, or champagne, which must come from the French region of the same name. Only products made in the place were the foods were first created can be sold under the traditional name.

Fine Cooking magazine offers this suggestion for getting the right stuff: Look at the rind. An authentic wheel has the words “Parmigiano Reggiano” stenciled closely and repeatedly around the rind of the entire wheel so that every piece of rind will bear part of these markings. The label signifies that certain standards have been met in the production of the cheese.