DailyDirt: Stop! Don't Eat That...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Eating healthier is a common new year's resolution, and it might be good to start simple and stop consuming one unhealthy snack item. However, a completely healthy diet is a totally different task. There are countless fad diets that don't really work or aren't as healthy as they're supposed to be. On top of all that, we should also keep an eye out for the outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and food safety recommendations. Maybe people who drink all their calories aren't totally crazy....

• Fish and other aquatic animals caught from the Passaic River in New Jersey should NOT be eaten -- because toxic waste has been dumped into that waterway for decades and proposed cleanup projects would cost well over a billion dollars (and have not yet started). The Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group (aka the Lower Passaic CPG is offering a "fish exchange" to swap frozen tilapia for any fish caught from the Passaic. Yum. Three-eyed fish [url]
• California, Oregon and Washington produce the most Dungeness crab in the US, but right now, the ~$60 million industry isn't doing so well. Domoic acid is being measured in marine wildlife along the West coast, caused by a bloom of algae in the Pacific, and levels are decreasing. With justified caution, though, crab catchers are staying away from their usual crop until levels are deemed safe, saying "We are not like the beef industry. We don't do recalls." [url]
• The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (a joint effort for the CDC, USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service) published a report on foodborne illness, covering hundreds of outbreaks between 1998 and 2012. If you don't eat beef or any vegetables grown in rows, what's left to eat? [url]

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Filed Under: cdc, diet, domoic acid, dungeness crab, food, food safety, foodborne illness, fsis, health, ifsac, lower passaic river study area cooperating parties group, poison, pollution, seafood, soylent, superfund site, toxic, usda

UK Intellectual Property Office Plays Up Imaginary 'Toxic' Claim In Grabbing Food Pretending To Be From Somewhere Else

from the grab,-go-and-exaggerate dept

When it comes to regulatory enforcement, agencies are often at a loss to try and spin actions as somehow being positive. Often such seizures are seen as petty and overreaching acts focusing on business protectionism or the shutting down threats to tax revenue (permanently in some cases) by regular people, meaning that getting public support for them can be an uphill struggle. Alcohol taxes are so unpopular that it's the origin behind one of the most popular sports in the US – NASCAR. Thus it's tempting to try and upsell things by stretching claims beyond all credulity, as the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) departments did recently.

Facebook followers of the IPO were confronted with this story just recently: "Campaign cracks down on toxic fake alcohol" screams the headline, with the comment that thousands of liters were seized in Operation OPSON (a name that looks like it was short for "operation poison"). A serious bust of dangerous goods clearly, and clearly the agencies are doing a great job protecting the country, so share it and back to cat pictures.

Or you could actually read the article itself, and find the story isn't quite as portrayed, and no cyanide-filled bottles cosplaying as spirituous liquors were annihilated by brave officials. For that matter, not only is OPSON not a veiled reference to poison, it's not even a priority. At the head of "notes to editors," Operation OPSON is described quite differently:

"Operation OPSON, jointly run by Interpol and Europol, began in 2011 to tackle the criminal production and sale of counterfeit 'protected food name' products, such as gorgonzola or champagne. It is now an international project that regularly sees the seizure of hundreds of tonnes of fake and substandard food."

That's right, international police agencies are running an operation to seize food not because they are bad, dangerous, or harmful, but because they weren't made in an approved locale. While some are fairly evident and obvious, such as lamb or beef labelled "scotch" or "welsh," others are less-so. A Cornish pasty made in Devon or Derbyshire isn't actually a Cornish pasty, because it wasn't made in Cornwall. Likewise if you were to make Feta cheese, you can't actually call it Feta, unless the sheep/goat milk came from Greece. Even Belgium has wanted in on the act for its chocolate industry.

The food is fake (and presumed sub-standard) not because it's not that food, but because the place that made it wasn't within a certain circle on a map, even if it's absolutely identical and indistinguishable from the same product made inside that circle. This was never more evident than in 2007, when the protections around "Newcastle Brown Ale" were lifted… because the Scottish & Newcastle brewery wanted to move outside the circle.

But what of the toxic alcohol seized by the gallon? Well, like the goods themselves, it's not what it appears. The 2,421.5 liters grabbed by authorities are in their own words mostly "...for fake or fiscal infringing wines and spirits." Not because they were dangerous, but because of tax evasion, or trademark violations. So where's the "toxic" issue in the headline?

The poison comes from a raid in Derbyshire, where:

"There was little of the finished product or the raw materials (Coolex screenwash) in the unit but a large quantity of bottles, tops and boxes."

Never mind, because:

"A small amount of the finished product was identified, and on examination was found to contain high levels of iso-propanol. Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) causes intense drunkenness, is often used in cleaning chemicals."

The question is, was that actually the finished product, or one that was put aside because it had those high levels? Moreover, it's not exactly the most toxic, as the LD50 (lethal dose) for a rat orally is 5045 mg per kilogram. Compare with, say, ethanol ("good" alcohol), at 3450 mg per kilogram of mouse. Probably why even their expert, Visiting Professor at the University of Reading, Tony Hines had to say:

"...even at low levels, a 'couple of doubles' will cause dizziness, low blood pressure, abdominal pain and nausea."

Not exactly "toxic" though, or all that different from regular booze, let's be fair. In fact, the major difference is that isopropyl alcohol is just more potent than ethanol. So, to drive home the seriousness of this, they close with the following paragraph.

"In 2012, methanol poisoning from fake vodka resulted in the deaths of 50 people in the Czech Republic. In 2014, 2 men were sentenced to life imprisonment for their part in this tragedy, and many others sentenced to 14 to 20 years for their part. Eighty survivors were blinded as a result of consuming the poison."

Not to be flippant about it (the incident has killed 51), but this was an incident that happened 30 months ago 1500 km away. It even used a different chemical (methanol), so its inclusion is completely irrelevant to the issues at hand, and is there solely to try and justify tax and trademark-based raids and seizures as being about safety, and pump up the "shareability" factor by giving them a excuse to hang "toxic" in the headline.

Now, don't get me wrong, tainted and unsafe goods are bad, there's no doubt about that. Yet if you're going to try and play up a safety angle, then you really have to have a safety problem to hang your hat on. The vodka made from screenwash might be disturbing to some, but "toxic fake alcohol" is pushing it, when even if every drop of vodka they seized (171.1 liters) that year were high in isopropyl alcohol, it's only 7% of the total seized. And yet we know they didn't grab anywhere near that amount, because more than 240 bottles of the stuff is hardly "little of the finished product," a description which would seem to me to indicate a dozen liters or less. And since they found only empties, it means it's already gone out, so they've not really "cracked down" on it either.

Overall, the only toxic thing seems to be the press release, and then only for any journalist sloppy enough to regurgitate it without bothering to read it. That's probably why, on Twitter, where pushback, feedback and replies are harder to bury, there's absolutely no mention of "toxic" at all.

That's because when it comes to poisonous, nothing beats hyperbolic government press releases for leaving good will stone dead.

Filed Under: bis, exaggeration, food, geographical indication, ipo, seizing, seizures, toxic, uk

DailyDirt: Are You Going To Eat That?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of food additives that are just fine to eat, and many of them even have scary-sounding chemical names. This doesn't mean that all food additives are bad OR that all food additives are good. While it would be much simpler to make generalizations and label things either good or bad, it's not quite that simple, unless you want to only eat food with a very limited shelf life. Some preservatives reduce food waste and have undetectable effects on the nutritional benefits of the foods they preserve. On the other hand, there are some toxic substances that should be avoided, and they can be all-natural (eg. arsenic) or have some anthropogenic origin.

• Have you ever seen pears individually wrapped in paper? Did you know there are chemicals impregnated into that paper? Do questions make these facts seem scarier than they should? [url]
• The traditional "paddy method" for growing rice in a flooded field can increase the amount of arsenic that the rice ultimately contains. Using less water to grow rice doesn't seem to be a solution because rice seems to absorb other toxic metals in the soil, like cadmium, instead. The amounts of these metals aren't that high, but it might be a good idea to try to remove these elements from farm soils before growing rice in fields that might have elevated levels of heavy metals. [url]
• Urban gardeners who want to grow their own food within city limits might want to test their soil for contaminants like lead, other heavy metals and cleaning solvents. Fortunately, there are a growing number of resources to help urban gardeners to know what might be in their soil and the possible hazards to avoid. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: additives, arsenic, cadmium, chemicals, contaminants, farming, food, gardening, health, heavy metals, pears, rice, toxic, urban gardening

DailyDirt: What's That In Your Food?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Processed foods are everywhere. They're quick and easy, as well as mighty tasty because they're designed to hit the perfect combination of salt, sugar and fat our bodies crave. Unfortunately, few things are actually perfect if you look closely enough. Common food packaging frequently lists ingredients that sound like a nightmare chemistry exam you haven't studied for, and preservatives aren't all that appetizing even if you can't taste them. Here are a few links on food additives that you may or may not think are scary.

• If you can't pronounce azodicarbonamide, then you probably don't think it should be in your food (or yoga mats, either). But the dose makes the poison, right? So, <45 ppm shouldn't be too bad. [url]
• Large food companies regularly re-formulate their products to tailor them to local markets, but the differences in ingredients lists for the UK versus the US sound a little disconcerting. Some ingredients are banned as food additives in other countries, but in the US, they're just fine... /ominous music [url]
• New food additives are increasingly coming from natural sources. Natural sources for blue food coloring aren't easy to come by, but there's an FDA-approved extract from a cyano­bacteria that's blue. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: azodicarbonamide, chemistry, fda, food, food additives, food coloring, health, ingredients, poison, preservatives, toxic

DailyDirt: Is It Safe To Eat That?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The global food supply chain is significantly more complicated than it was a few generations ago. Some of it is due to technological progress, but sometimes it's due to greed and/or pollution. Eliminating waste and making food processes as efficient as possible sounds like a admirable goal, but the food products created at the end of the day should be appetizing... and, more importantly, safe to eat. If you're not too squeamish, check out these links on food that might churn your stomach.

• Fermented sausages (aka fuet) can be delicious, but what if the bacteria used to make them came from baby poop? Spanish scientists collected some diapers and isolated some Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium samples from the fecal matter, and then they made some yummy (and healthier!?) sausages with the microbes. [url]
• Gutter oil is created from animal fats and cooking oil waste (collected from sewer drains), and the resulting recycled cooking oil -- along with toxins and carcinogens -- can end up in small restaurants and food trucks in China. The gutter oil industry has reportedly existed for over a decade, and there are estimates that as much as 10% of the cooking oil sold in China is gutter oil. [url]
• French beekeepers were wondering why their honey was a strange blue-green color that looked really unnatural. The likely culprit for the blue-green honey was processing waste that came from an M&M chocolate factory producing bright red, blue, green, yellow and brown candy shells. The resulting honey didn't taste much different, but it wasn't a product that could be sold. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bacteria, cooking oil, feces, fermented, food, food waste, fuet, gutter oil, honey, m&ms, scandal, toxic
Companies: mars