It should surprise no one that parts of the meat industry was less than pleased with my story yesterday on the so-called meat glue. Janet Riley, the spokeswoman for the industry’s lobbyists – the American Meat Institute – was frothing with criticism.  Here is a link to the story I wrote today for Scripps Howard News Service about the reaction from the meat producers.

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.)

Many people think – or at least hope – that infant baby formula has got to be some of safest, most carefully monitored food on the grocery shelves.  Not so, says Brian Jackson and his team of researchers from Dartmouth University’s Trace Element Analysis Laboratory.

In a study published today in Environmental Health Perspectives, the team reported that some organic infant milk formula and rice-based cereal had concentrations of inorganic arsenic up to six times the levels the EPA says is safe for drinking water. The arsenic levels were even higher in other food products tested by the scientists.

Rice has been shown repeatedly to absorb arsenic and other contaminants from the soil and water in which it is grown.

The study, funded by federal grants, also found high levels of the cancer-causing heavy metal in other cereal, energy bars and endurance liquids called “energy shots.” The researchers reported that the arsenic came from organic brown rice syrup that is used as a substitute sweetener believed to be healthier than the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup used in many foods.

The New Hampshire team criticized the federal government for failing to have any regulations which address the levels of arsenic in food.

“We conclude that there is an urgent need for regulatory limits on arsenic in food,” the study concluded.

For several years, many consumer and public health groups have urged Congress to introduce and enforce arsenic levels.

Little has happened.

Just two years ago, nanotechnology was estimated to be a $10 billion business. Now, financial forecasters predict that within three more years, the nano industry will grow to $1 trillion.

One of the most heavily used nanoparticles in this burgeoning business is titanium dioxide. It is also is one of the most extensively tested manmade creations because its use is rampant as a whitening agent and filler in a rapidly increasing number of foods, paints, coatings, cosmetic, personal care, and other consumer products.

It’s everywhere and most consumers don’t have a clue that they’re buying it.

For example, researchers at Arizona State University found TiO2 in hundreds of products including Twinkies and other Hostess baked goods, in various flavors of Kool-Aid, in M&Ms, in Trident and Dentyne gum, and in Mentos Mints, Hershey’s dark chocolate, Cadbury candy and Betty Crocker frostings.

A study released this week in ACS’s journal of Environmental Science & Technology broke down the amount of nano TiO2 found in commonly used products

Food led the list, the study said, with the highest content of TiO2 in candies, sweets and chewing gums.

Some personal care products such as toothpastes and several sunscreens – even some marketed for babies – contained 1 percent to more than 10 percent of TiO2. The study reported that most shampoos, deodorants, and shaving creams contained the lowest levels of titanium.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, which can only recommend worker safeguards to OSHA, has strongly suggested that workers use care when they are exposed to nano TiO2.

The Food and Drug Administration has offered little guidance to consumers or the food industry on the presence of the substance in food.

This angers many public health experts because animal studies have show that inhalation, ingestion or absorption of nano TiO2 can cause cell damage, induce emphysema-like lung injury, penetrate the blood-brain barrier, damage the liver and kidney and cause cancer.

There also is growing proof that this man-made nanoparticle of heavy metal presents a threat to the environment. Researchers have found TiO2 is in sunscreen washing off bathers in pools, lakes or other waterways. The weathering of paint can free it into the soil, and passage though the body can release it into sewage treatment systems.

Testing has found that levels of the TiO2 exist even after being treated in sewage systems and as it moves elsewhere in the environment as treated waste discharged to water supplies or applied as biosolids to farmland.

Strange as it sound, a bit of corporate honesty from the U.S.’s two largest sellers of orange juice has done wonders for some mom and pop–size OJ bottlers in Florida.

Florida Department of Agriculture said Friday that at least five small orange juice bottlers or packers have modified the labels on their bottles so they now boldly proclaim “made only from Florida oranges” or “No Imported Juices.”

Their sales are reportedly soaring.

The instant desirability of domestic orange juice was triggered by a report to the Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 28 by Coca-cola Co, which markets Minute-Maid, Simply Orange and Odwalla brands. The company told the FDA that it had found the fungus-killing chemical carbendazim during routine testing of OJ it had imported from Brazil.

PepsiCo Inc, which has a large chunk of the market with its Tropicana, also found fungicide in its subsequent testing. Both companies insist the levels of the banned substance are “at trace levels” and pose no risk to consumers.

Carbendazim, also called methyl 2-benzimidazoyl carbamate or MBC, is used to prevent black spots in citrus. It is illegal in oranges in the U.S., but is widely used in Brazil which is this country’s largest foreign supplier of OJ.

“Carbendazim in orange juice is unlawful pesticide chemical residue under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act,” the FDA reminded the juice trade association by letter.

The FDA says it has set up an extensive intercept program at ports to “identify, sample and hold” all orange juice coming in from Brazil. The juice will be restricted from distribution unless or until a “clean bill of health” is issued after the testing.

Any imported shipments containing carbendazim at 10 ppb or greater will be refused entry into the U.S. and must be destroyed or returned to the exporter, FDA says.

Although the Brazilian growing season it nearing its end, Florida juice officials say FDA’s testing of the imported juice and juice products may continue for months.

It’s difficult for consumers to know where the juice they’re giving to their kids actually comes from.

If you look at the very fine, sometimes nearly invisible, country-of-origin information on the labels of juice containers you’ll see that all the big brands say the juice within comes from the U.S., Brazil, Mexico or Costa Rica.

Tuesday, FDA said the few tests they have completed found nothing of concern.

Meanwhile, the FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency keep pointing to each other in the debate on which agency is responsible for protecting consumers.

“EPA sets the tolerances (for pesticides) and FDA enforces them. But EPA does the risk assessment and determines the levels that can be present,” says Sebastian Cianci, a policy analyst for FDA’s press officer.

However, his counterpart in EPA says not so.

“EPA does not oversee the importation of food products; that’s FDA.

They seem to be bucking everything to us, yet this is all FDA,” said a senior EPA press officer.

As a writer I care about the use of words and often stand in awe of some of the gifted weaving of various parts of speech that my colleagues do with such skill and apparent ease.

Today, within about three hours, while interviewing a couple of helpful people at the USDA and the FDA, I was stunned at the identical linguistic utterances that came from the mouths of two government officials.

With enthusiasm that comes with a new year, I was trying hard to pin down the history of a substance that had been approved for use as an additive by the FDA.  It doesn’t matter what the concoction was (because it will be months before I get enough to publish a story) But, while describing what little they knew about the material and how it got its government approval, both food safety experts used the same phrase.

In describing what might happen if this stuff or any other untested additive went awry, both said it could necessitate hospitalization or cause “possible treatment failure” in those exposed.

Huh?  Treatment failure?

A bit sheepishly, the gentleman from FDA quickly said: “You know. Death.” When asked why the agencies didn’t just say death, he added, “It is a bit jarring.”

I did a Google search to see if “treatment failure” had actually been used as a euphemism for death in any published government statement.  I found several.

For example, in August, the CDC reported on a “Multistate Outbreak of Human Salmonella Heidelberg Infections Linked to Turkey.”

It said: “. . . Heidelberg is resistant to several commonly prescribed antibiotics; this antibiotic resistance may increase the risk of hospitalization or possible treatment failure in infected individuals.

I’m not sure what using the more gentle descriptive phrases mean, if anything.  I just found it interesting.

A former career FDA lawyer says Santa Claus has broken almost every rule in the agency’s book and violated numerous food, drug and import laws, regulations and standards over the years.

Benjamin England says Saint Nick secured his position on the FDA’s “naughty list” because he allegedly illegally imported millions of dollars worth of merchandise to children in the United States, albeit as gifts.

“They call that smuggling, folks,” England said in his holiday message.

“I feel bad for the guy,” said England. “Nobody wants to poo-poo on (Santa’s) gift-giving and good cheer but he needs to realize that the FDA’s going to come after him at some point.”

England said the jolly old man’s alleged violations center on:

•  Bringing the oft-requested chocolates, candies and makeup into the country without proper FDA inspection or screening.
•  Failure to properly register Santa’s workshops at the North Pole and other gift-making locations with the FDA.
•  With 2.2 billion children in the world receiving at least 1 gift per Christmas, England worries that many of the packages have labels that ignores listing proper ingredients.

“Just because you’ve been doing something a long time without having any FDA detentions or refusals before doesn’t mean you’re doing it right,” said England in reference to Santa Claus’s past history of successful importing.

“I know for a fact that there are no in-house attorneys working for Mr. Clause at the North Pole because lawyers hate the cold,” said England, who runs an import consulting firm.

Sorry. I couldn’t bring myself to ask FDA for comment on this.

Information on arsenic exposure has been all over the news this year and the latest study to be released says that eating rice may lead to potentially harmful exposure to the toxic heavy metal.

Lots of rice is eaten in the U.S., report researchers from Dartmouth College’s Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center.  The average American consumes about a half cup of rice daily. Asian Americans eat about two cups and Hispanic Americans somewhere in between. But, according to the Dartmouth investigation, much of that rice is tainted with arsenic.

Photo by Ricewisdom.org

The study, funded by the government and published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, collected urine samples from 229 women six months into their pregnancy.

The results of that testing, according to an analysis of the research by Consumer Reports, indicated that consuming slightly more than half a cup of cooked rice per day resulted in a total urinary arsenic concentrations pretty much equal to consuming a liter of water containing the maximum amount of arsenic allowable in public drinking water.

The consumer group says “exposure to arsenic in the womb has been linked to problems ranging from low birth weight and infant mortality to hampered immune function and increased death rates from lung cancer later in life.”

The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service says the structure of rice plants and the way they grow — submerged in water — leads to absorption of arsenic at a far higher rate than other plants.

The Dartmouth researchers are among many public health experts who say that stringent limits must be established by government regulators for levels of arsenic considered acceptable in food.

Consumption of arsenic, which is often naturally occurring,  has long been a public health problem, but studies are now showing that more and more consumers are being exposed to the poisonous heavy metal.

This fall alone, the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization warned again that tens of millions of people are being exposed to dangerous levels of arsenic from their municipal water supply or private wells.

In September, TV physician Dr. Mehmet Oz commissioned an analysis of apple and grape juice and found alarming levels of arsenic. The television star said that some samples had total arsenic levels above the EPA drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion.

The reaction to Oz’s assertion was instantaneous, loud and brutal, even within the medical community. His findings were first sloughed off as a phony publicity gambit. The FDA discredited it. Dr. Richard Besser, the medical editor for ABC News, called Oz’s claims “extremely irresponsible” and said it was like “yelling fire in a movie theater.”

However, last week there was widespread crow-eating going on when a Consumer Reports investigation, which included additional laboratory testing, found the findings reported by the daytime TV star were accurate. FDA promised to reexamine the arsenic levels in juice and Oz appeared live with Besser on the ABC evening news and apologized for his criticism.

(Andrew Schneider also writes for foodsafetynews.com) )