Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced new and stricter testing standards for use by chicken and turkey farmers to reduce Salmonella and Campylobacter in their flocks.

The Food Safety Inspection Service says after the standards have been in play for two years there will be 39,000 fewer cases of Campylobacter and 26,000 less people who contract Salmonella.

The standards announced today are the first-ever for Campylobacter and revises earlier standards for chicken and turkey. The new standards set a maximum percentage level of poultry samples that can test positive for a given pathogen.
“There is no more important mission at USDA than ensuring the safety of our food,” said Vilsack. “The new standards mark an important step in our efforts to protect consumers by further reducing the incidence of Salmonella and opening a new front in the fight against Campylobacter.”

Today’s standards to slash foodborne pathogens also included a guide on practices to reduce E. coli O157:H7 contamination in cattle.

The new standards ”represent the most significant food-safety development from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 15 years,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, Food Safety Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit national health advocacy group.

“These long-awaited changes will push poultry processors to improve the safety of their products,” she says.
The Centers for Disease Control says Campylobacter is the most commonly reported bacterial cause of foodborne infection in the United States.

Most retail chicken is contaminated with the jejuni strain of the pathogen, says the Atlanta-based food illness specialists and that one study reported finding it in 98 percent of retail chicken meat. In addition to the usual unpleasant side effects of food poisoning CDC says it also is linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome.

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.

Prof. Vaughn Bryant

For the first time, a U.S. lab is able to conduct such tests on the golden nectar.

Texas A&M University announced last week that Vaughn Bryant, a palynologist and an anthropology professor, is now the only person in the U.S. doing melissopalynology – the study of pollen in honey that allows identification of its country of origin.

Performing isotopic studies, Bryant says he has examined more than 100 honey samples for importers, exporters, beekeepers and producers with his DNA-based analysis. Many of the samples he analyzed contained labels from other countries when in fact they originated in China. They were reportedly re-routed to avoid tariffs of up to 500 percent.

Some foreign exporters get around the tariff by mixing honey from different sources, others infuse up to 50 percent high fructose corn syrup into the honey.  It is becoming common now for smugglers to use a process called ultra-filtration which removes the pollen and makes it almost impossible for any laboratory to determine its origin.

“The beekeepers of the U.S. have been pleading with the Food and Drug Administration to enact stricter guidelines about accurate labeling for honey, but that is a long, slow process,’’ Bryant said. “Meanwhile, I’m trying to help out here and there, but it’s almost impossible to keep up.”

“We estimate that millions of pounds of Chinese honey continue to enter the U.S. from countries that do not have commercial honey businesses,” said Jill Clark, vice president for marketing of Dutch Gold Honey, of Lancaster, Penn.

“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, yet have recently exported large amounts of honey to the United States,” Clark added. In the same in statement she announced the creation of a website which tells consumers, honey companies, food manufacturers and retailers what actions to take to eliminate illegally imported honey.

The site, called “HonestHoney.com,” is supported by Dutch Gold, Golden Heritage Foods of Hillsboro, Kan., Burleson’s Inc. from Waxahachie, Texas, and Odem International from Rosemere, Ont., one of North America’s largest honey suppliers. The site offers guides for consumers, honey brokers, packers and sellers suggesting ways to avoid the illegal honey.

Although the group said they notified most of the big players in the U.S. honey market of the initiative, no others joined in, which is bit puzzling.

Take Sue Bee, formally known as Sioux Bee Honey, which says it’s the country’s largest supplier of honey – about 40-million pounds each year.  The company did not respond to e-mail messages asking why they chose not to participate.

For more than three years, federal investigators have had hit-or-miss successes trying to intercept boxcar-sized loads of illegally labeled honey coming into ports on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. More than a dozen arrests have been made of honey launderers and reportedly “active investigations” are targeting a number of other major players in the international scam.

Almost all have centered on honey actually from China that is intentionally mislabeled to avoid paying stiff import tariffs–and often contaminated with illegal animal antibiotics as well.

Those behind the initiative to alert the public say the illegal sales of honey have cost the U.S. up to $200 million in uncollected import duties in the past two years while continuing to threaten the domestic honey business and the future of America’s beekeepers.

“When honey is imported illegally, no one can be confident of its true source and quality. Some products are not 100 percent honey and have other quality issues,” said Clark.

While many consumers only think about honey as the golden liquid in plastic honey bears, in reality most of the honey imported into the U.S. is delivered in 250-gallon or tanker car-sized loads and ends up as an ingredient in cereals, breads, cookies, crackers, breakfast bars, meats, salad dressings, barbecue sauces, mustards, beverages, ice creams, yogurts and candies.

Investigators say that some of the food processors are prime, often-willing, targets for brokers trying to offload lower-cost, bogus honey.

The group says it hopes all the players will accept the provisions of this pledge:

THE HONEST HONEY PLEDGE
We pledge to protect our customers and consumers, as well as the global reputation of honey products, by ensuring to our utmost ability that honey is ethically sourced in a transparent and traceable manner from known beekeepers and brokers; that honey moves through the supply chain in full accordance with U.S. law and without circumvention of trade duties; that it carries truthful labeling as to its source, has been tested to ensure quality, and has been handled in a safe and secure manner from hive to table. We endeavor to do business with companies that share our concern for food safety and security. We pledge to stand against the collection, processing or sale of adulterated honey or honey that has been obtained in circumvention of U.S. law. We espouse a global standard for high-quality honey that does not allow for adulteration with added syrups or other sweetener extenders, or use of inappropriate additives in honey production. We actively support U.S. beekeepers, including supporting research to help beekeepers maintain the health and high quality of U.S. honey production and to fight colony collapse disorder.

For a longer version of this story, see what I wrote today for AOL News.

National Honey Board

“The objective of the meeting will be a frank discussion of issues affecting the domestic honey industry, primarily transshipment of foreign honey and adulteration of honey,” said a note to all participants from the National Honey Packers & Dealers Association.

The meeting comes as federal investigators and the offices of the U.S. attorney in at least four states continue to search for  packing companies, honey brokers and importers allegedly involved in facilitating or purchasing intentionally mislabeled or bogus honey.

The crime, which some major suppliers say may involve 50 percent or more of all imported honey, centers on foreign hucksters and shady importers taking cheap, but abundant Chinese honey, moving it to a country with a reputation for a quality product, changing the country-of-origin on the shipping papers and then marketing the bogus load to brokers in the U.S.

There are two reasons for this illegal global bait-and-switch. First, the U.S. has set a tariff on each pound of Chinese honey brought into the U.S. – higher than any other nation – to protect domestic honey producers from the cheaper Chinese honey flooding the market.

But more importantly, Chinese honey often contains traces of an illegal animal antibiotic called chloramphenicol.  This drug, purchased from India, was first used years ago to stem an epidemic of disease that was laying waste to most of  China’s bee colonies.

The drug still taints most of the Chinese honey, some importers say and the Food and Drug Administration and the Canadian government found the contaminate in imported honey in January.

For the rest of this story, see what I wrote today for AOLNews.com.

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 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.

But, 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 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, among other reasons, if 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 can 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.

Photo Spice Co.

After months of research, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it was concerned about a well-known loophole in the Food and Drug Administration regulations that for decades has concerned consumer and public health advocates.

It deals with a often controversial exception to the FDA’s practice of demanding rigorous analysis of the contents of processed food. Immunity from the FDA’s scrutiny is bestowed with the four word designation of “generally regarded as safe.”

What this means is that food manufacturers who want to include an additive in a food product are often spared having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in safety tests and can save years in getting something on to store shelves.

The GAO determined that:

• FDA generally doesn’t know about most of these GRAS determinations because companies are not required to inform the agency.
• FDA has not taken steps that could help ensure the safety of additives listed as GRAS.
• Food products may contain numerous ingredients, including GRAS substances, making it difficult, if not impossible, for public health authorities to attribute a food safety problem to a specific GRAS additives.
• FDA does not systematically reconsider the safety of GRAS substances as new information or new methods for evaluating safety become available.

The investigators also noted that while FDA has issued guidance to minimize the potential for conflicts of interest among its own staff who look at the safety of GRAS substances, it has not issued any restrictions for companies to use with their hired scientific experts.

“There is a relatively small community of experts qualified to sit on the GRAS designation panels and, inevitably, these experts may have corporate or financial affiliations that could bias their decisions,” the report said.

The investigators said it was almost impossible to link adverse effects to GRAS additives because their presence in food is rarely known outside those who produced it.

GAO said that the food safety agency told it that complaints and public concerns could prompt them to reconsider the safety of a GRAS substance.

Yet the FDA’s actions present a different picture.

More than 40 years ago, the GRAS-labeled artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned after allegations of serious health effects. That was pretty much it for decades.

A more serious debate over another GRAS additive is going on today and is generating repeated demands from unions, public health experts and others for another ban.

The substance is diacetyl, a chemical butter flavoring that has killed a handful of workers and sickened hundreds of others in microwave popcorn plants, bakeries, candy makers and other food processors.

What angers worker and food safety specialists even more is that many manufacturers say they have switched to a substitute for the old lung-destroying flavoring additive that government researchers have determined contains just as much or more diacetyl than the old concoction.

It too is listed as GRAS and the FDA knows it, but has done nothing.

Over the past 50 years, thousands of spices, artificial flavors, and binders, vitamins and minerals, and preservatives have been declared as GRAS. These substances are added to enhance a food’s taste, texture, nutritional content, or shelf life.

These safety designations started in 1958, when Congress blessed GRAS by amending the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to say that the safety of an additive “does not need to be established with absolute certainty.”  Rather, the Act said that a scientific panel selected by the manufacturer can rule that no harm will result from the intended use of an additive.

But in reality, the only ones who know whether not the additives are actually safe is the company and its own analysts or the outside labs they hire.

Thousands of exemptions are granted by food industry trade groups. For example, the largest, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association, has bestowed GRAS on more than 2,600 additives since 1960.

The GAO expressed added concern over two specific areas – imported additives, where the level of safety consideration is often completely unknown and the growing use of GRAS designation in engineered nanomaterial in food.

In responding to the report, the FDA says it agreed with many of the faults that GAO documented but said that the agency would have to seek authority from Congress in order to require all companies to inform it of their designation of additives as GRAS.

If that were to happen, FDA said, it could place an added burden on food producers and tax FDA’s resources.

The GAO investigation was requested by two democrats, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin of and Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

Here is  a link to an AOLnews version of this story.

We went though this last year with contaminated peanuts from the Georgia and Texas plants of Peanut Corporation of America.

PCA recalled the tainted goobers, but the ripple effect spread for weeks as hundreds of manufacturers pulled thousands of products made with the pathogen-containing nuts off store shelves throughout North American.

It’s not peanuts this time, but rather a flavoring agent called hydrolyzed vegetable protein. As unappetizing as the name sounds, it is used as a flavoring agent in thousands of gravies, sauces, soups, salad dressings and snacks.

The source of the tainted concoction is Basic Food Flavors, Inc., an international supplier of flavor and seasoning agents.   The FDA conducted an investigation of the company’s Las Vegas, Nev., production plant after a customer who purchased the flavoring had it analyzed and found it contained Salmonella.

As the FDA did with the peanuts and does with many other recalled foods, the agency has to wait until the downstream producers of these consumer products realize that the food they’re selling may also be contaminated.

The federal food detectives say they don’t have enough investigators or a structure that permits them to identify and chase all the ingredients in the processed food that’s manufactured and sold in this country.

For more details on this recall see the story I wrote on AOLnews.com.

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.