Phto by Pharma

No one knows the precise number of these brazen thefts because shippers of the goods are not required to report the crimes, but experts say the crimes have been increasing every year, especially over the past three years. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration thinks it’s a major issue and has sounded alerts to all players who manufacture, ship, store or sell these regulated items.

It’s not just the cash value of the larceny that’s at issue. Security experts from FDA, insurance investigators and state health departments are worried about the contraband being contaminated by mishandling; or mixed and sold with counterfeit drugs.

“There have been several cases where patients experienced adverse reactions from stolen drugs, reactions that were most likely due to improper storage and handling. We do not want to see this increase in thefts continue,” Michael Chappell,
 FDA’s acting Assistant Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs wrote in a letter to manufacturers, wholesalers and trade associations last week.

He reminded those whose shipments of FDA-regulated items were targeted by the thieves that these crimes threaten the public health because a product that has been taken from the “legitimate supply chain poses potential safety risks to consumers.”

In March alone, FDA reported several major thefts:

• On March 14, Eli Lilly and Company reported one of the largest known drugs thefts.  Cases of antidepressants and anti-psychotics were stolen from a Lilly distribution center located in Enfield, Conn., when thieves cut through a warehouse roof and rappelled down, deactivated a sophisticated alarm, picked up drugs valued at about $75 million and fled.
• The day before,  5,000 cases of Mead Johnson Nutrition’s infant formula products were stolen from a truck stop in Richwood, Ky.
• On March 3,  generic over-the-counter products worth $400,000 were stolen from a truck near Dallas.

It is not just the cargo movers and warehouse that are targeted.

Last year, Orlando, Fla., police busted 21 people for stealing millions of dollars of baby formula – worth $25 to $46 a can – off the shelves of grocery, drug, big-box and discount stores in four counties. What’s worse, according to police statements at the time, the thieves changed the expiration dates on many of the cans before selling them at flea markets and on eBay.

Some of the stolen loot is intercepted by Customs agents and major U.S. ports, but more frequently nefarious brokers will offer the bogus goods on the internet.

The biggest worry is that these stolen products, once reintroduced into the legitimate supply chain, are often accompanied by counterfeit products or products with improperly extended expiration dates.

It’s a frequent occurrence, says Benjamin England, a former FDA special agent and FDA lawyer, who now runs a consulting group called FDAimports.

He explains how the con is run: “Say I steal 250 bottles of an AIDS drug, but sell 500 bottles into the market, with the additional bottles being counterfeit or relabeled with an extended expiration date,” says England. “The stolen product acts as cover for the counterfeit or expired product.” (England said he saw this quite frequently when he was a federal investigator in Miami.)

Many of the criminal gangs in this line of work have concluded that it’s safer than pushing heroin and cocaine.

For a longer version of this story see what I wrote today for AOLNews.

For the appetizer: San Antonio Bay oysters polluted with Noroviruses. For the main course: grilled beef infected with E. coli from contaminated tenderizing needles; chicken with Campylobacter or imported ham with Listeria monocytogenes. Then there’s a side dish of stuffing loaded with salmonella-contaminated hazelnuts. And for those watching their weight: a popular nutritional drink fouled with the food poison Bacillus cereus.

Even the family pet wasn’t forgotten.  Its pigs ears and beef hooves were laced with salmonella.

All those item were recalled in December by the federal government or were the subjects of warnings by food safety experts. And 2010 isn’t shaping up to set a safer table, according to some of the country’s leading food safety experts.

That’s not the message from the government’s three big players in the war against dangerous food — the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control. All predict the food supply will be safer because of new safeguards being pushed by the Obama administration.

Less than two months after taking office, the president announced the creation of the Food Safety Working Group and promised more resources to safeguard the nation’s food supply.

“Many of the laws and regulations governing food safety in America have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt,” Obama said at that time.

“There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat …are safe and don’t cause us harm,” said Obama.

The USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service and the FDA are trying to improve product traceability, both forward and back, in the production chain, with the goal of being able to respond quicker to outbreaks, said Caleb Weaver, USDA’s press secretary.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wants his agency to “further reduce the incidence of food-borne pathogens and the number of food-borne-related deaths to zero,” Weaver added.

However, some managers and field investigators in the same agencies have views much closer to those of food safety activists. They predict that the very powerful food industry lobbyists, especially for the meat producers, will go down swinging and screaming to thwart meaningful food safety reform.

If you want to see what the food safety experts are worried about, here is a link to the rest of my story on AOL News’ Sphere.com

The swelling is a condition in which fluid either accumulates within brain cells or is retained in blood vessels that form around brain cells.

Controlling this swelling of brain cells can help to lower impaired blood flow to the brain and reduce paralyze and save lives, said scientists at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service at the agency’s Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Md.

The researchers conducted cell-culture studies with a culture of glial cells which provide support and protection for neurons in the brain and spinal cord.

They exposed half the cells to a cinnamon extract, while other portion received none.

Ninety minutes later, the researchers measured volume of the glial cells and found that the oxygen- and glucose-deprived cells had increased by more than 34 percent.

But in the cells to which cinnamon polyphenol extract was added, this increased swelling was absent.

This research is important, especially with the large numbers of GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan who received traumatic brain injuries from roadside bombs and other explosions.

Kiran Panickar, the study’s lead author and neurobiologist worked on the research with ARS chemists Richard Anderson and Marilyn Polansky.

Much additional research must be done with animal studies the next possible step.

Cinnamon has a long history both as a spice and as a medicine. It’s know for its anti-microbial and anti-clotting benefits and also its ability to control blood sugar.

ARS is the principal scientific research agency of the USDA and supports the agency’s priority of improving nutrition and health.

Photo ACS

The study of pumpkins was prompted by the emergence of clinical bacterial strains that show resistance against conventional antibiotics. Researchers around the globe are looking for new material to stifle infections.

Past studies hinted that pumpkin, long used as folk medicine in some countries, could offer antibacterial benefits. It’s not alone, researchers have shown that popular spices like garlic, onion, oregano and thyme have also been found to be among the most antimicrobial.

The pumpkin has long been recognized as a natural medicine cabinet. Food scientists have cited historical references to pumpkin being used by Native Americans for the treatment of intestinal infections.

As long ago as the 1870s, American’s ultimate authority for prescription, over-the-counter and natural medications – the United States Pharmacopoeia – listed pumpkin skin and seeds for treatment of parasites and kidney maladies.

Pumpkin is very low in calories, rich in potassium,  magnesium and iron and its bright orange flesh of pumpkin is loaded with the antioxidant beta -carotene that fight free radicals.

At least two studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that the antioxidant in pumpkin can provide a defense for the body against infection of the mucous membranes of the eyes, ear, nose, throat and also the lungs and bladder.

It is this infection-fighting capability that the Korean research team from Chosun University Research Center for Proteineous Materials was investigating. Kyung-Soo Hahm, Yoonkyung Park and their colleagues had been studying natural antibiotics that have the potential to overcome antimicrobial resistance.

According to their study, published in the current issue of Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the scientists extracted proteins from pumpkin rinds to see if it would inhibit the growth of microbes.

Rinds from pumpkins purchased in local markets were homogenized in extraction buffer, then washed and ultra-filtered. The extract was then tested for antimicrobial against both pathogenic bacteria and yeast.

The scientists targeted Candida albicans, a Diploid fungus that causes vaginal yeast infections, diaper rash in infants, and other – sometimes severe – health problems.

The study, funded by the Korean government, showed the pumpkin protein could be developed into a natural medicine for fighting yeast infections in humans.

Additionally, the protein also blocked the growth of several fungi that attack important plant crops and could be useful as an agricultural fungicide, the researchers concluded.

Here is a link to the Korean study.

The logo of urine farming fans

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that plants fertilized with urine produced four times more tomatoes than nonfertilized plants and as much as plants given traditional chemical fertilizer.

The researchers from the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Kuopio, Finland, said urine has been shown to work well on cucumber, corn, cabbage, and other crops, but tomatoes were selected for the study because it is commonly cultivated in home gardens and is an ingredient in many recipes.

The results suggest that urine can be used as a substitute for regular fertilizer to increase the yields of tomatoes without posing any microbial or chemical risks, the report says.

Urine for the study was collected from several private homes over the winter.  Taste testing by a panel of 20 individuals found all tomato samples were evaluated as being equally good.

Here is a link to the actual Finnish study and, if you’re really into this concept of gardening, this is a link to a UK website that will tell you all need to know about urine farming, including where to get urine-diverting toilets and urinals.

But you just have to wonder whether the top doc has been to a country fair lately.

The Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, Washington.     (c) coldtruth.com

Back in April, a teacher brought several brownies from a booth in front of a church.  Three days later she shared it with her son and colleagues at the LA preschool.

Within 90-minutes, all the brownie nibblers were experiencing nausea, dizziness, headache, numbness and tingling of fingertips, but continued teaching, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Today, five months later, the government confirmed that the sidewalk delicacy was laced with pot and issued a report containing more than you ever wanted to know about marijuana and baked goods.

If you want to learn more, such as the minister saying his church wasn’t having a fundraiser and didn’t sell the brownies or that one of the dope-eating moms was breast-feeding at the time, here is a link to the report from the CDC.

Okay, I know this is public health, but really, why did I just write 200 words about this?

Well, perhaps because CDC thought it was important enough to print it in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Review.  But probably, I shared it because this was the first thing I’ve received from CDC in months that didn’t involve Swine Flu.

Beijing is apparently less than thrilled over efforts in the upcoming budget bill that – because of safety concerns — might ban importation of some food products from China.

To retaliate, Chinese importers are refusing to import chicken feet from the U.S. And Chinese consumers sure do like American chicken feet. According to a U.S. House ag committee  researcher, China is the largest consumer of the scrawny, yellow claws. Last year, Chinese shoppers bought about 800 million pounds of the delicacies, she said.

For more of the dollars-and-cents intrigue and trade office shenanigans, here is a link to a really well done, fact-filled piece that Reuter’s reporter Bob Burgdorfer wrote this week,

But let’s get to the heart of the matter: Who really cares about chicken feet?  Well, my great-grandmother, for one. She used them in her chicken soup, which was rich, golden and loaded with flavor.

And if you wonder what the Chinese do with all those fowl feet, I offer you a link to the weird meat experts.

I’ve read this site several times and I can’t find a name to whom I can credit this interesting, culinary reportage. But here’s what he or she writes about the topic:

“Lots of Chinese restaurants, especially Cantonese dim sum ones, serve chicken feet as a popular small dish. Usually for brunch. They are prepared in different ways — from plain steamed, to fried with a slightly spicy black bean sauce.”

Transgenic rice fights pollen allergy

Fumio Takaiwa and colleagues write in this week’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that the next generation of transgenic crops — “veggies and grains that produce higher levels of nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, or even medicines and vaccines” — are being developed to directly benefit human health.

Great advances have been made, the scientists say, but admit they are “anxiously trying to determine whether foods produced from these ‘biopharmaceutical’ crops will be safe for humans and the environment.”

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. This is a growing public health problem in Japan that affects about 20 percent of the population.

After 26 weeks of animal studies, in which monkeys were fed the steamed rice, no health problems were seen with the allergy-fighting rice.

Human testing may be next, they say.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes before food safety advocates in the U.S. and elsewhere, weigh in on the new uses for genetically engineered crops.

I bet it won’t be long.

Here’s a link to the study.

Everyone knows about the about the tens of thousands of Chinese infants struck down but kidney-destroying melamine in their milk and the 60,000 dogs and cats worldwide who died after eating it in the pet food. Here are some other examples to consider:

Stinky tofu (yes, a real name) is a very popular street food throughout many Asian countries. Its aroma, which can bring the weak to their knees, comes from lengthy and thus costly fermentation. Chinese food authorities found that some tofu producers created the reeking odor with rancid water and sewage. The desirable dark color came from ten illegal chemical dyes.

Chicken and duck farmers added Sudan Red Dye IV to the feed used in their poultry operations. The dye, a cancer-causing agent banned in food in many countries, makes the yolks a vivid bright reddish orange, and is sought after as a special and costly treat.

Some of the Chinese verdors at the IFT expo. (c) a. schneider

Another egg fraud centers on another foul-smelling but very expensive and coveted traditional delicacy called a 1000-year-old egg. They’re really not preserved for ten centuries, but more like 100 to 150 days, according to a cook who gave me a bite of one in Vancouver. She said they normally are buried in a mixture of soil, lime, ashes, salt and green tea. Eventually, the egg white turns a gooey brown in color, and the yolk becomes dark grayish-green. But people love it.

Money hungry phony egg producers eliminate the waiting time and just add lead oxide to alter the eggs. However, the chemical can destroy blood, the central nervous system, kidneys and other organs as well as causing birth defects and convulsions.

Other inventive food suppliers, instead of using a higher quality flour, have been caught adding alum to strengthen noodles and borax to preserve rice cakes, while fish farmers use the cancer and birth defect-causing antibiotic and antifungal agent Malachite green to control disease in the fish they sell. Of course, there are the beekeepers who taint their honey by using illegal antibiotics in their hives.

“Everyone of these food adulterations can be attributed to economic motivation,” said Dr. Yao-wen Huang, a professor of food science at the University of Georgia. Most of the appealing examples mentioned above are his, and he and his colleague Hong Zhuang, a research food technologist for the USDA, were speaking at the International Institute of Food Technologists on food safety challenges in China.

The existing food safety system is not effective for a variety of reasons, including that 17 different bureaucracies work under the food and drug safety umbrella, and they each jealously guard their power, Huang explained but added, that 8o percent of China’s food producers are small operations employing fewer than 10 workers and most pay little attention to the few safety requirement that exist.

Not only is enforcement convoluted, but also the blurred lines of responsibility and weak investigatory skills are further hampered by corruption, with some inspectors and their bosses take bribes in exchange for favors, the professor told me.

Prof. Yao-Wen Huang

On June 1, China imposed a new food safety law.

Qin Zhenkui, president of the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine, believes the comprehensive requirements of the new law will make a difference.

Zhuang presented remarks from Zhenkui, which detailed the increased controls on food producers. These include inspection and licensing of all food manufacturers as well as rigorous requirements and previous state approval for all additives.

Food inspectors are not permitted to grant any exceptions to the rules, Zhuang explained.

This could eliminate, or at least reduce, the bribes for not seeing wrongdoing, but is that enough?

“The law should be an improvement,” Huang told me. “Everyone in the supply chain should be forced to get involved in ensuring the safety of the food — from the farmers, to the processors, the transporters, exporters and the importers themselves.

“’I didn’t know’ can no longer be an acceptable answer from anyone when it comes to food safety.”

This morning I stopped by nine exhibits of Chinese companies exporting food and asked representatives what they thought of their country’s two week-old food safety law.

Five sales agents told me that they’d never heard of it. The remaining four said the were forbidden to speak with the press, but one added, “China only sells the highest quality food. The problems in the press are fabricated.”

He wouldn’t give me his name.