Cold Truth

Feds bust importers of bacteria-laced cheese

Posted on April 26, 2010, 16:12, by schneider and received No Comments ».

Two Hondurans were arrested by federal agents today for allegedly importing more than 170,000 pounds of cheese contaminated with a dangerous bacteria which could quickly cause food poisoning if eaten.

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.

Needle-haters rejoice and developing nations may get a better shot at scarce vaccines.

Posted on April 23, 2010, 08:50, by schneider and received No Comments ».

A vaccine delivered by a nanopatch works as well as one delivered with a needle and syringe, but is pain free and uses 100 times less medication, according to researchers from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

Photo by All Word News.UK

“Because the nanopatch requires neither a trained practitioner to administer it nor refrigeration, it has enormous potential to cheaply deliver vaccines in developing nations,” said lead researcher Mark Kendall, a professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

Being both painless and needle-free, Kendall said in a statement released by the university, the nanopatch offers hope for those with needle phobia, as well as the potential to improve the vaccination experience for young children.

Kendall told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the nanopatch is designed to place vaccines directly into the skin where a “rich body of immune cells are,” unlike the needle, which injects vaccines into muscles with few immune cells. As a result, the vaccines delivered via nanopatch are more effective, he said.

The nanopatch targeted cells found in a narrow layer just beneath the skin surface. The patch was “much smaller than a postage stamp and comprised of several thousands of densely packed (nanosized) projections invisible to the human eye,” the professor said.

In tests on laboratory mice, Kendall and his team dry-coated influenza vaccine onto the projections, which are nanosized delivery points, and then applied the patches to the animals’ skin for two minutes, all it took for the full dosage to be delivered.

“Our result is 10 times better than the best results achieved by other delivery methods,” being developed elsewhere around the globe, he said. “And by using far less vaccine we believe that the Nanopatch will enable the vaccination of many more people,” Kendall said.

“When compared to a needle and syringe a nanopatch is cheap to produce and it is easy to imagine a situation in which a government might provide vaccinations for a pandemic such as swine flu to be collected from a (pharmacist) or sent in the mail,” said the announcement.

“Our next step is to prove the effectiveness of nanopatches in human clinical trials,” he said.

Here’s a link to the version I wrote for AOLnewa.com.

Much ado about something nano-sized

Posted on April 20, 2010, 17:41, by schneider and received 2 Comments ».

The White House patted itself on the back and said that the federal government’s nanotechnology operation was doing a “commendable” job.

These words did not come from President Obama, but rather were the conclusion of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and 12 leading civilian experts recruited to examine what the White House-run National Nanotechnology Initiative had accomplished since President Clinton created it a decade ago.

I dutifully reported that incestuous praise today on AOL News. It was only appropriate to give the federal nano gurus equal time, since last month I wrote eight stories on what many public health experts saw as dangerous shortcomings in the government’s programs to identify and regulate the safety of these wondrous atomic concoctions.

Here is a link to what I wrote today and another to the series of nano stories AOL posted last month.

The 71-page report by the scientific advisors said that unless the U.S. doubles the billions it’s spending on nano, China, South Korea and the European Union will wipe out America’s commercial edge, among other things.

Needless to say, the federal nano gang at the White House, NNI and elsewhere in the government is not happy with my reporting. They expressed their displeasure at length today in an Op-ed that AOL eagerly ran.

The White House advisors also shared their annoyance by issuing “talking points” to nano folks – in and out of the government – on how to respond to what I wrote.

Sensitive little group isn’t it?

Prof. Andrew Maynard

Personally, I think the world would be a bit better off if these policy makers focused more on determining whether nanoparticles are harmful or not before they urge everyone to fill the marketplace with them.

And, if all this isn’t enough to bore the hell out of everyone, here are more exciting views on this sparring match from one of the nation’s leading nano-safety proponents – Prof. Andrew Maynard.

Chinese workers: Chemicals used on iPhones led to paralysis.

Posted on April 4, 2010, 11:49, by kbmhartnett and received No Comments ».

Would you believe that building the touch screens on Apple’s iPhone and other popular high-tech toys is sickening and perhaps killing Chinese workers who put them together?

The electronics-assembly company Wintek has admitted that more than 60 workers were sickened by exposure to n-hexane exposure, a highly toxic solvent used to clean the electronic touch screens. This comes from the latest in a series of stories that Kathleen E. McLaughlin has written from China for the online news operation GlobalPost.

She wrote this about the workers:

“Their troubles began in October 2008, when Wintek’s Suzhou factory introduced n-hexane to clean touch screens in the final stages of production. According to the local government, the company lacked necessary permits to handle the toxin, which dries more quickly than alcohol, shaving seconds from production time and speeding up the line.”

McLaughlin, a Montanan, and proud of it, has been covering sensitive health and environmental stories in China for years, including occupational hazards from chemical exposure.

Because of its severe toxicity, hexane has been banned in many countries. A toxicologist at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health told me that the restrictions on the chemical go back to the early 1960s when shoemakers in Italy, Japan and France suffered outbreaks of debilitating nerve disorders because they were breathing air containing high concentrations of hexane.

The physical damage from exposure appears first as a numbness in the feet and hands of those who inhale a significant amount of the toxic vapors. Severe and continued exposure can lead to paralysis to the limbs from the nerve damage.

Apple refused to comment to McLaughlin or other reporters on the allegations that the construction of the iPhone screen was connected to the illness.

Nevertheless, several of the workers reportedly told Chinese health authorities of the link.

Here are links to the last three of the worker illness stories that McLaughlin did for GlobalPost.com:

Silicon Sweatshops: And illness in Suzhou

Silicon Sweatshops: The Strange Death of Li Liang

Silicon Sweatshops: What’s a worker worth?

–Andrew Schneider

‘Nanotech Gamble’ series on AOL

Posted on March 24, 2010, 13:45, by kbmhartnett and received 2 Comments ».

My package of stories,”The Nanotech Gamble” on AOL News, grew out of interviews with more than 450 scientists, government officials, experts, advocates and others over a 15-month period, and my review of thousands of pages of related documents. I’m continuing to follow this topic, and more stories will be posted on AOL.

Here are some quick points drawn from this first group of stories:

Nanotechnology has an increasingly pervasive place in everyday life. The National Science Foundation, for instance, estimates that up to $70 billion of nano-containing items are sold in the U.S. each year. Along with that growth comes research showing that nanomaterials pose significant and potentially fatal health risks.

The nanomaterial most widely used in consumer products is nano-titanium dioxide. It’s used in cosmetics, sunblock and toothpaste. A UCLA study found that ingesting nanotechnology can damage and destroy DNA and chromosomes.

Carbon nanotubes are the most commonly used nanomaterial in industrial applications. Research shows that they can penetrate the lungs faster and more deeply than asbestos.

The Food and Drug Administration, which does not regulate cosmetics or nutritional supplements containing nano-titanium dioxide, says no nano-containing food is sold in this country. But some of the FDA’s own risk assessors say otherwise.

Also, though the Obama administration argues that it has increased the federal government’s investment in nanotech safety efforts, the 2011 budget shows a continued and striking disparity between funding for nanotech development and risk assessment. Just $117 million, or 6.6 percent, of the $18 billion allotted for nanotech overall is for safety-related initiatives.

As one expert put it: “How long should the public have to wait before the government takes protective action? Must the bodies stack up first?”

Thousands of additives get into food without the FDA ensuring their safety.

Posted on March 8, 2010, 10:35, by schneider and received 1 Comment ».

A newly released report has criticized America’s food safety watchdog for systemically failing to ensure the safety of what food manufacturers put in what we eat.

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.

An almost invisible path of food poisoning.

Posted on March 5, 2010, 01:45, by schneider and received 1 Comment ».

It’s happening again. A single salmonella-contaminated food item is forcing recalls of scores of other products throughout the country.

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.

Now it’s red pepper you need to watch out for.

Posted on February 26, 2010, 18:31, by schneider and received No Comments ».

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.

Don’t feel left out: Feds say “Flu shots for all.”

Posted on February 26, 2010, 14:01, by schneider and received No Comments ».

Now everybody has an equal chance of getting a flu shot every year.

The “shot czars” on the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices have called for equal access for everyone seeking the protective inoculation.

The panel of immunization experts voted to expand the recommendation for annual influenza vaccination to include all people aged 6 months and older, a move meant to remove real and perceived barriers to getting the flu shots. Continue reading this post »

Last year was a rough one for food safety. Will 2010 be any better?

Posted on January 4, 2010, 21:36, by schneider and received 2 Comments ».

Over the holidays I wrote about a meal we all wanted to avoid.

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. Continue reading this post »