>>Fake-food scandal<<

[conniption]

The Guardian

Fake-food scandal revealed as tests show third of products mislabelled

Consumers are being sold drinks with banned flame-retardant additives, pork in beef, and fake cheese, laboratory tests show

Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian, Friday 7 February 2014
Jump to comments (1551)


Some ham tested contained 'meat emulsion' (meat ground with additives so fat can be put through it) or 'meat slurry' (removing scraps of meat from bones). Photo: Alamy

Consumers are being sold food including mozzarella that is less than half real cheese, ham on pizzas that is either poultry or "meat emulsion", and frozen prawns that are 50% water, according to tests by a public laboratory.

The checks on hundreds of food samples, which were taken in West Yorkshire, revealed that more than a third were not what they claimed to be, or were mislabelled in some way. Their results have been shared with the Guardian.

Testers also discovered beef mince adulterated with pork or poultry, and even a herbal slimming tea that was neither herb nor tea but glucose powder laced with a withdrawn prescription drug for obesity at 13 times the normal dose.

A third of fruit juices sampled were not what they claimed or had labelling errors. Two contained additives that are not permitted in the EU, including brominated vegetable oil, which is designed for use in flame retardants and linked to behavioural problems in rats at high doses.

Experts said they fear the alarming findings from 38% of 900 sample tests by West Yorkshire councils were representative of the picture nationally, with the public at increasing risk as budgets to detect fake or mislabelled foods plummet.

Counterfeit vodka sold by small shops remains a major problem, with several samples not meeting the percentage of alcohol laid down for the spirit. In one case, tests revealed that the "vodka" had been made not from alcohol derived from agricultural produce, as required, but from isopropanol, used in antifreeze and as an industrial solvent.

Samples were collected both as part of general surveillance of all foods and as part of a programme targeted at categories of foodstuffs where cutting corners is considered more likely.

West Yorkshire's public analyst, Dr Duncan Campbell, said of the findings: "We are routinely finding problems with more than a third of samples, which is disturbing at a time when the budget for food standards inspection and analysis is being cut."

He said he thought the problems uncovered in his area were representative of the picture in the country as a whole.

The scale of cheating and misrepresentation revealed by the tests was described by Maria Eagle, the shadow environment secretary, as unacceptable. "Consumers deserve to know what they are buying and eating and cracking down on the mislabelling of food must become a greater priority for the government," she said.

A Defra spokesperson said: "There are already robust procedures in places to identify and prevent food fraud and the FSA has increased funding to support local authorities to carry out this work to £2m.

"We will continue to work closely with the food industry, enforcement agencies and across government to improve intelligence on food fraud and clamp down on deliberate attempts to deceive consumers."

Testing food is the responsibility of local authorities and their trading standards departments, but as their budgets have been cut many councils have reduced checks or stopped collecting samples altogether.

The number of samples taken to test whether food being sold matched what was claimed fell nationally by nearly 7% between 2012 and 2013, and had fallen by over 18% in the year before that. About 10% of local authorities did no compositional sampling at all last year, according to the consumer watchdog Which?

West Yorkshire is unusual in retaining a leading public laboratory and maintaining its testing regime. Samples are anonymised for testing by public analysts to prevent bias, so we are unable to see who had made or sold individual products. Many of the samples were collected from fast-food restaurants, independent retailers and wholesalers; some were from larger stores and manufacturers.

Substitution of cheaper ingredients for expensive materials was a recurring problem with meat and dairy products – both sectors that have seen steep price rises on commodity markets. While West Yorkshire found no horsemeat in its tests after the scandal had broken, mince and diced meats regularly contained meat of the wrong species.

In some cases, this was likely to be the result of mincing machines in butcher's shops not being properly cleaned between batches; in others there was clear substitution of cheaper species. Samples of beef contained pork or poultry, or both, and beef was being passed off as more expensive lamb, especially in takeaways, ready meals, and by wholesalers.

Ham, which should be made from the legs of pigs, was regularly made from poultry meat instead: the preservatives and brining process add a pink colour that makes it hard to detect except by laboratory analysis.

Meat emulsion – a mixture in which meat is finely ground along with additives so that fat can be dispersed through it – had also been used in some kinds of ham, as had mechanically separated meat, a slurry produced by removing scraps of meat from bones, which acts as a cheap filler although its use is not permitted in ham.

Levels of salt that breached target limits set by the Food Standards Agency were a recurring problem in sausages and some ethnic restaurant meals. The substitution of cheaper vegetable fat for the dairy fat with which cheese must legally be made was common. Samples of mozzarella turned out in one case to be only 40% dairy fat, and in another only 75%.

Several samples of cheese on pizzas were not in fact cheese as claimed but cheese analogue, made with vegetable oil and additives. It is not illegal to use cheese analogue but it should be properly identified as such.

Using water to adulterate and increase profits was a problem with frozen seafood. A kilo pack of frozen king prawns examined contained large quantities of ice glaze, and on defrosting the prawns themselves were found to be 18% added water. Only half the weight of the pack was seafood as opposed to water.

In some cases the results raised concerns over immediate food safety. The herbal slimming tea that was mostly sugar contained a prescription obesity drug that has been withdrawn because of its side-effects.

Making false promises was a dominant theme among vitamin and mineral supplements. Of 43 samples tested, 88% made health claims that are not allowed under legislation because there is no science to support them or were mislabelled as to their content in some way.

Even when fraud or mislabelling is found, it is not aways followed up. Once it has detected a problem with a product, a council is required to refer it to the home authority in which it was originally made, which may or may not take enforcement action.

Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, called for more effective use of resources and tougher penalties.

"No one wants to see another incident like the horsemeat scandal happen again and the rigorous enforcement of standards underpinned by effective levels of food testing is essential for restoring consumers' trust in this industry," he said.

• This article was amended on 8 February to include a Defra comment which had been omitted.

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Global Post

Agence France-Presse - February 14, 2014

Global police swoop seizes millions in fake food, drink

A global police operation by Interpol and Europol has seized more than a thousand tonnes of fake food and drink worth millions of euros, Europol announced on Friday.

"More than 1,200 tonnes of fake and substandard food and nearly 430,000 litres of counterfeit drinks have been seized," The Hague-based Europol said in a statement.

Operation Opson III targeted counterfeit schemes in 33 countries in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia over December and January.

Europol said more than 131,000 litres of fake oil and vinegar -- enough to fill 485 bathtubs -- as well as some 80,000 biscuits and chocolate bars, 20 tonnes of spices and condiments and 45 tonnes of dairy products were impounded.

In Italy, agents rolled up an organised crime network making and distributing fake champagne, confiscating 60,000 bottles and fake labels, while in Bangkok, police seized more than 270 bottles of fake whisky after a raid on a Thai warehouse.

Spanish police detained 24 people after 4.5 tonnes of snails were illegally poached from a forest, while in the Philippines almost 150,000 fake stock cubes were seized.

In France, police shut down an illegal abattoir on the outskirts of Paris.

Colombian police confiscated fake food and drink valued some $17.2 million (12.4 million euros).

"In total some 96 people were arrested or detained with investigations continuing in many countries," Europol said.

"Among the key aims of Operation Opson, which means 'food' in ancient Greek, are the identification of organised crime networks behind the trafficking... and to raise awareness about the dangers posed by counterfeit and substandard foods," it added.

"These results show the global character of this type of fraud and the necessity to tackle these crimes together on a national and international level," added Belgian food safety inspector Stijn Adriaenssen in the statement.

jhe/cjo/gk

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Dr.Axe

Date: ?

Your Extra Virgin Olive Oil is Fake!
by Dr. Josh Axe



This is going to be a major disappointment for some of you. That really healthy olive oil you thought you were purchasing at the store may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. You probably never thought that expensive bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil might be laced with GMO soybean oil and herb flavors so it tastes more like real olive oil right?

Americans spend more than $700 million a year on olive oil, but most of that may be waste because of olive oil fraud.
According to Tom Mueller, the investigative author of Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, 70 percent of the extra virgin olive oil sold worldwide is watered down with other oils and enhancers making them far from virgin.

We’re being lied to by manufacturers who are actually selling you genetically engineered oils that are toxic to your health when you actually think you are getting an oil that is healthy and at the heart of the Mediterranean diet.
Mueller exposes the billion dollar industry, showing how EVOO is tainted across the globe. When Australian researchers went and tested Olive Oil from suppliers in 2012, every brand submitted failed the tests and zero gained a pure certification.

Authentication tests at UC Davis in 2011 tested 124 different samples and uncovered that two-thirds of common brands of extra virgin olive oil being sold in California were not virgin and many had other oils like GMO soybean oil and GMO canola oil added in.

In 2008 85 farms were confiscated and 23 people arrested for their oil fraud. Then last year, a well known spanish EVOO company was busted and the two business owners were thrown in jail for selling supposed extra virgin olive oil that was really a mix of 73% sunflower oil!

Olive Oil Standards and Certifications
According to Dr. Audri Lanford there are actually hundreds of varieties of olives but only a few main classifications for olive oil, including:

> Extra virgin, which is produced by cold pressing and does not use chemicals for refinement.
> Virgin olive oil, comes from a second pressing or riper olives but is still good quality.
> Light, pure, or blends are refined olive oil, which usually means they have been chemically processed and mixed with other low quality oils.
> Lampante, is low quality and the italian word for lamp oil and is considered unfit for human consumption. It may be derived from old, decaying olives, and has been chemically processed.

Mueller, says that Bad olives have free radicals and impurities, so consuming NON-Virgin olive oil can actually be bad for your health where consuming REAL Olive Oil has anti-inflammatory compounds, anti-oxidants and 200+ heart healthy ingredients.

How to recognize genuine extra virgin olive oil
Here are my 5 Tips for recognizing REAL Extra Virgin Olive Oil:

> Be suspicious of any extra virgin olive oil that costs less than $10 a liter.
> Look for a seal from the International Olive Oil Council (IOC).
> Look for a harvesting date on the label
> Anything labeled light, pure, or a blend isn’t virgin quality.
> Shop for oils in dark bottles. This protects the oil from oxidation.

Also, Extra virgin olive oil solidifies when it’s cold. You can put it in the refrigerator and it should become cloudy and thicken. If it’s doesn’t then it’s not pure extra virgin.

Here is a REAL extra virgin olive oil
Here is a link to a great quality brand recommend by the Weston A. Price Foundation:
http://www.radiantlifecatalog.com/produ ... -fats-oils

EVOO Alternatives
Quality Olive Oil is a great healthy oil to have on hand, but it shouldn’t be used for cooking. In that case, here are some other great oil options:

Coconut Oil — Just like olive oil, coconut oil is best when it’s cold pressed and virgin. Do NOT buy refined coconut oil. Your coconut oil should smell like you’re on a beach in the Caribbean. It has a high heat threshold and is full of healthy fats.

Organic Pastured Butter / Ghee – Contains ALA and CLA which can promote weight loss. Also, contains healthy short chain fatty acids and has a higher heat threshold. Stick with Organic only when buying butter.

Red Palm Oil — Red palm oil is made from the palm fruit instead of the palm kernel, and in its unrefined state, it is high in vitamin E and beta-carotene. It’s also stable under high heat and great for cooking.

Sources


Researchers at UC Davis find problems with purity of imported olive oil
Deborah Bogle and Tom Mueller “Losing our Virginity” The Advertiser May 12, 2012 Pg 11-14
Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

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Your Honey Isn’t Honey

[seemslikeadream]

China fake meat scandal: telling your rat from your mutton

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://blog.thenibble.com/2012/02/02/ti ... c-vinegar/

Excerpt:

AUTHENTIC BALSAMIC VINEGAR

True aceto balsamico has an Italian government designation of D.O.C. (Denominazione di Origine Controllata, similar to the French A.O.C. designation), which means that everything from the grape varietals to aging time and the type of wood of the barrels adheres to exact standards. The grapes must be of the Trebbiano and Lambrusco varietals (though a few others are allowed in small quantities), and entirely harvested from the vineyards of the region.

Balsamic is not made from grape juice that is fermented into wine, like conventional wine vinegar. Instead, it is made from unfermented grape must (freshly-pressed juice), which is concentrated by simmering for hours until it becomes a thick, caramelized syrup. (Thus, authentic balsamic is not a wine vinegar.)
The syrup is then aged in a succession of barrels made from at least five different kinds of wood, each of which imparts its character to the vinegar. Ash, cherry, chestnut, juniper and mulberry are five of the specified woods. Each successive aging barrel is smaller than the last, as evaporation concentrates the balsamic.
Authentic balsamic vinegar must be aged for minimum of 12 years. The longer it ages, the more rich and concentrated it becomes. The bottles are sealed with the authentic red wax seal of the consorzio, and numbered. (Don’t be misled by just any wax seal—some manufacturers of non-consorzio balsamic use one to make their products look like the real thing.)

No wonder authentic balsamic is so costly—from $40 a bottle for 12-year balsamic to hundreds of dollars for 50- and 75-year old balsamics in tiny 3.5-ounce bottles. But it tastes like heaven, and can be used to garnish everything from appetizers, meat and fish to desserts—chocolate cake, ice cream, Parmigiano Reggiano and strawberries.

FAKE, FAUX OR “SUPERMARKET” BALSAMIC VINEGAR

Compare the minimum-12-year meticulous process that creates authentic balsamic vinegar to “supermarket balsamic,” much of which is ordinary red wine vinegar (perhaps made from Trebbiano grapes) colored with caramel to achieve the dark brown color of an authentic balsamic and sweetened to approximate a balsamic. It may or may not be aged for a short amount of time in large oak barrels or stainless steel barrels. It may be made in a factory in Modena, but at $3.99 a bottle, it’s not authentic balsamic vinegar. (There are “factory balsamics” made in Modena. Read more about them in a longer discussion of balsamic vinegar.)

While traditional balsamic vinegar cooks down grape must into a concentrated, flavorful syrup prior to aging, white balsamic producers add cooked-down grape juice to ordinary white wine vinegar. It creates an amber color and a slightly sweet flavor.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/t ... wIN185QC7s


Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey
Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins
By Andrew Schneider | November 7, 2011

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.”

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.

The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.

Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey – some containing illegal antibiotics – on the U.S. market for years.

Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 jars, jugs and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

The contents were analyzed for pollen by Vaughn Bryant, a professor at Texas A&M University and one of the nation’s premier melissopalynologists, or investigators of pollen in honey.

Bryant, who is director of the Palynology Research Laboratory, found that among the containers of honey provided by Food Safety News:

•76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

•100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

•77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

•100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.

•Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and “natural” stores like PCC and Trader Joe’s had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.

And if you have to buy at major grocery chains, the analysis found that your odds are somewhat better of getting honey that wasn’t ultra-filtered if you buy brands labeled as organic. Out of seven samples tested, five (71 percent) were heavy with pollen. All of the organic honey was produced in Brazil, according to the labels.

The National Honey Board, a federal research and promotion organization under USDA oversight, says the bulk of foreign honey (at least 60 percent or more) is sold to the food industry for use in baked goods, beverages, sauces and processed foods. Food Safety News did not examine these products for this story.

Some U.S. honey packers didn’t want to talk about how they process their merchandise.

One who did was Bob Olney, of Honey Tree Inc., in Michigan, who sells its Winnie the Pooh honey in Walmart stores. Bryant’s analysis of the contents of the container made in Winnie’s image found that the pollen had been removed.

Olney says that his honey came from suppliers in Montana, North Dakota and Alberta. “It was filtered in processing because North American shoppers want their honey crystal clear,” he said.

The packers of Silverbow Honey added: “The grocery stores want processed honey as it lasts longer on the shelves.”

However, most beekeepers say traditional filtering used by most will catch bee parts, wax, debris from the hives and other visible contaminants but will leave the pollen in place.

Ernie Groeb, the president and CEO of Groeb Farms Inc., which calls itself “the world’s largest packer of honey,” says he makes no specific requirement to the pollen content of the 85 million pounds of honey his company buys.

Groeb sells retail under the Miller’s brand and says he buys 100 percent pure honey, but does not “specify nor do we require that the pollen be left in or be removed.”

He says that there are many different filtering methods used by beekeepers and honey packers.

“We buy basically what’s considered raw honey. We trust good suppliers. That’s what we rely on,” said Groeb, whose headquarters is in Onsted, Mich.

Why Remove the Pollen?

Removal of all pollen from honey “makes no sense” and is completely contrary to marketing the highest quality product possible, Mark Jensen, president of the American Honey Producers Association, told Food Safety News.

“I don’t know of any U.S. producer that would want to do that. Elimination of all pollen can only be achieved by ultra-filtering and this filtration process does nothing but cost money and diminish the quality of the honey,” Jensen said.

“In my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey and it’s even safer to assume that it entered the country uninspected and in violation of federal law,” he added.

Richard Adee, whose 80,000 hives in multiple states produce 7 million pounds of honey each year, told Food Safety News that “honey has been valued by millions for centuries for its flavor and nutritional value and that is precisely what is completely removed by the ultra-filtration process.”

“There is only one reason to ultra-filter honey and there’s nothing good about it,” he says.

“It’s no secret to anyone in the business that the only reason all the pollen is filtered out is to hide where it initially came from and the fact is that in almost all cases, that is China,” Adee added.

The Sioux Honey Association, who says it’s America’s largest supplier, declined repeated requests for comments on ultra-filtration, what Sue Bee does with its foreign honey and whether it’s u
ltra-filtered when they buy it. The co-op markets retail under Sue Bee, Clover Maid, Aunt Sue, Natural Pure and many store brands.

Eric Wenger, director of quality services for Golden Heritage Foods, the nation’s third largest packer, said his company takes every precaution not to buy laundered Chinese honey.

“We are well aware of the tricks being used by some brokers to sell honey that originated in China and laundering it in a second country by filtering out the pollen and other adulterants,” said Wenger, whose firm markets 55 million pounds of honey annually under its Busy Bee brand, store brands, club stores and food service.

“The brokers know that if there’s an absence of all pollen in the raw honey we won’t buy it, we won’t touch it, because without pollen we have no way to verify its origin.”

He said his company uses “extreme care” including pollen analysis when purchasing foreign honey, especially from countries like India, Vietnam and others that have or have had “business arrangements” with Chinese honey producers.

Golden Heritage, Wenger said, then carefully removes all pollen from the raw honey when it’s processed to extend shelf life, but says, “as we see it, that is not ultra-filtration.

“There is a significant difference between filtration, which is a standard industry practice intended to create a shelf-stable honey, and ultra-filtration, which is a deceptive, illegal, unethical practice.”

Some of the foreign and state standards that are being instituted can be read to mean different things, Wenger said “but the confusion can be eliminated and we can all be held to the same appropriate standards for quality if FDA finally establishes the standards we’ve all wanted for so long.”

Groeb says he has urged FDA to take action as he also “totally supports a standard of Identity for honey. It will help everyone have common ground as to what pure honey truly is!”

What’s Wrong With Chinese Honey?

Chinese honey has long had a poor reputation in the U.S., where – in 2001 – the Federal Trade Commission imposed stiff import tariffs or taxes to stop the Chinese from flooding the marketplace with dirt-cheap, heavily subsidized honey, which was forcing American beekeepers out of business.

To avoid the dumping tariffs, the Chinese quickly began transshipping honey to several other countries, then laundering it by switching the color of the shipping drums, the documents and labels to indicate a bogus but tariff-free country of origin for the honey.

Most U.S. honey buyers knew about the Chinese actions because of the sudden availability of lower cost honey, and little was said.

The FDA — either because of lack of interest or resources — devoted little effort to inspecting imported honey. Nevertheless, the agency had occasionally either been told of, or had stumbled upon, Chinese honey contaminated with chloramphenicol and other illegal animal antibiotics which are dangerous, even fatal, to a very small percentage of the population.

Mostly, the adulteration went undetected. Sometimes FDA caught it.

In one instance 10 years ago, contaminated Chinese honey was shipped to Canada and then on to a warehouse in Houston where it was sold to jelly maker J.M. Smuckers and the national baker Sara Lee.

By the time the FDA said it realized the Chinese honey was tainted, Smuckers had sold 12,040 cases of individually packed honey to Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Sara Lee said it may have been used in a half-million loaves of bread that were on store shelves.

Eventually, some honey packers became worried about what they were pumping into the plastic bears and jars they were selling. They began using in-house or private labs to test for honey diluted with inexpensive high fructose corn syrup or 13 other illegal sweeteners or for the presence of illegal antibiotics. But even the most sophisticated of these tests would not pinpoint the geographic source of the honey.

Food scientists and honey specialists say pollen is the only foolproof fingerprint to a honey’s source.

Federal investigators working on criminal indictments and a very few conscientious packers were willing to pay stiff fees to have the pollen in their honey analyzed for country of origin. That complex, multi-step analysis is done by fewer than five commercial laboratories in the world.

But, Customs and Justice Department investigators told Food Safety News that whenever U.S. food safety or criminal experts verify a method to identify potentially illegal honey – such as analyzing the pollen – the laundering operators find a way to thwart it, such as ultra-filtration.

The U.S. imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months. Almost 60 percent came from Asian countries – traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.

And websites still openly offer brokers who will illegally transship honey and scores of other tariff-protected goods from China to the U.S.

FDA’s Lack of Action

The Food and Drug Administration weighed into the filtration issue years ago.

“The FDA has sent a letter to industry stating that the FDA does not consider ‘ultra-filtered’ honey to be honey,” agency press officer Tamara Ward told Food Safety News.

She went on to explain: “We have not halted any importation of honey because we have yet to detect ‘ultra-filtered’ honey. If we do detect ‘ultra-filtered’ honey we will refuse entry.”

Many in the honey industry and some in FDA’s import office say they doubt that FDA checks more than 5 percent of all foreign honey shipments.

For three months, the FDA promised Food Safety News to make its “honey expert” available to explain what that statement meant. It never happened. Further, the federal food safety authorities refused offers to examine Bryant’s analysis and explain what it plans to do about the selling of honey it says is adulterated because of the removal of pollen, a key ingredient.

Major food safety standard-setting organizations such as the United Nations’ Codex Alimentarius, the European Union and the European Food Safety Authority say the intentional removal of pollen is dangerous because it eliminates the ability of consumers and law enforcement to determine the actual origin of the honey.

“The removal of pollen will make the determination of botanical and geographic origin of honey impossible and circumvents the ability to trace and identify the actual source of the honey,” says the European Union Directive on Honey.

The Codex commission’s Standard for Honey, which sets principles for the international trade in food, has ruled that “No pollen or constituent particular to honey may be removed except where this is unavoidable in the removal of foreign matter. . .” It even suggested what size mesh to use (not smaller than 0.2mm or 200 micron) to filter out unwanted debris — bits of wax and wood from the frames, and parts of bees — but retain 95 percent of all the pollen.

Food Safety News asked Bryant to analyze foreign honey packaged in Italy, Hungary, Greece, Tasmania and New Zealand to try to get a feeling for whether the Codex standards for pollen were being heeded overseas. The samples from every country but Greece were loaded with various types and amounts of pollen. Honey from Greece had none.

You’ll Never Know

In many cases, consumers would have an easier time deciphering state secrets than pinning down where the honey they’re buying in groceries actually came from.

The majority of the honey that Bryant’s analysis found to have no pollen was packaged as store brands by outside companies but carried a label unique to the food chain. For example, Giant Eagle has a ValuTime label on some of its honey. In Target it’s called Market Pantry, Naturally Preferred and others. Walmart uses Great Value and Safeway just says Safeway. Wegmans also uses its own name.

Who actually bottled these store brands is often a mystery.

A noteworthy exception is Golden Heritage of Hillsboro, Kan. The company either puts its name or decipherable initials on the back of store brands it fills.

“We’re never bashful about discussing the products we put out” said Wenger, the company’s quality director. “We want people to know who to contact if they have questions.”

The big grocery chains were no help in identifying the sources of the honey they package in their store brands.

For example, when Food Safety News was hunting the source of nine samples that came back as ultra-filtered from QFC, Fred Myer and King Sooper, the various customer service numbers all led to representatives of Kroger, which owns them all. The replies were identical: “We can’t release that information. It is proprietary.”

One of the customer service representatives said the contact address on two of the honeys being questioned was in Sioux City, Iowa, which is where Sioux Bee’s corporate office is located.

Jessica Carlson, a public relations person for Target, waved the proprietary banner and also refused to say whether it was Target management or the honey suppliers that wanted the source of the honey kept from the public.

Similar non-answers came from representatives of Safeway, Walmart and Giant Eagle.

The drugstores weren’t any more open with the sources of their house brands of honey. A Rite Aid representative said “if it’s not marked made in China, than it’s made in the United States.” She didn’t know who made it but said “I’ll ask someone.”

Rite Aid, Walgreen and CVS have yet to supply the information.

Only two smaller Pacific Northwest grocery chains – Haggen and Metropolitan Market – both selling honey without pollen, weren’t bashful about the source of their honey. Haggen said right off that its brand comes from Golden Heritage. Metropolitan Market said its honey – Western Family – is packed by Bee Maid Honey, a co-op of beekeepers from the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

Pollen? Who Cares?

Why should consumers care if their honey has had its pollen removed?

“Raw honey is thought to have many medicinal properties,” says Kathy Egan, dietitian at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. ”Stomach ailments, anemia and allergies are just a few of the conditions that may be improved by consumption of unprocessed honey.”

But beyond pollen’s reported enzymes, antioxidants and well documented anti-allergenic benefits, a growing population of natural food advocates just don’t want their honey messed with.

There is enormous variety among honeys. They range in color from glass-clear to a dark mahogany and in consistency from watery to chunky to a crystallized solid. It’s the plants and flowers where the bees forage for nectar that will determine the significant difference in the taste, aroma and color of what the bees produce. It is the processing that controls the texture.

Food historians say that in the 1950s the typical grocery might have offered three or four different brands of honey. Today, a fair-sized store will offer 40 to 50 different types, flavors and sources of honey out of the estimated 300 different honeys made in the U.S.. And with the attractiveness of natural food and the locavore movement, honey’s popularity is burgeoning. Unfortunately, with it comes the potential for fraud.

Concocting a sweet-tasting syrup out of cane, corn or beet sugar, rice syrup or any of more than a dozen sweetening agents is a great deal easier, quicker and far less expensive than dealing with the natural brew of bees.

However, even the most dedicated beekeeper can unknowingly put incorrect information on a honey jar’s label.

Bryant has examined nearly 2,000 samples of honey sent in by beekeepers, honey importers, and ag officials checking commercial brands off store shelves. Types include premium honey such as “buckwheat, tupelo, sage, orange blossom, and sourwood” produced in Florida, North Carolina, California, New York and Virginia and “fireweed” from Alaska.

“Almost all were incorrectly labeled based on their pollen and nectar contents,” he said.

Out of the 60 plus samples that Bryant tested for Food Safety News, the absolute most flavorful said “blackberry” on the label. When Bryant concluded his examination of the pollen in this sample he found clover and wildflowers clearly outnumbering a smattering of grains of blackberry pollen.

For the most part we are not talking about intentional fraud here. Contrary to their most fervent wishes, beekeepers can’t control where their bees actually forage any more than they can keep the tides from changing. They offer their best guess on the predominant foliage within flying distance of the hives.

“I think we need a truth in labeling law in the U.S. as they have in other countries,” Bryant added.

FDA Ignores Pleas

No one can say for sure why the FDA has ignored repeated pleas from Congress, beekeepers and the honey industry to develop a U.S. standard for identification for honey.

Nancy Gentry owns the small Cross Creek Honey Company in Interlachen, Fla., and she isn’t worried about the quality of the honey she sells.

“I harvest my own honey. We put the frames in an extractor, spin it out, strain it, and it goes into a jar. It’s honey the way bees intended,” Gentry said.

But the negative stories on the discovery of tainted and bogus honey raised her fears for the public’s perception of honey.

She spent months of studying what the rest of the world was doing to protect consumers from tainted honey and questioning beekeepers and industry on what was needed here. Gentry became the leading force in crafting language for Florida to develop the nation’s first standard for identification for honey.

In July 2009, Florida adopted the standard and placed its Division of Food Safety in the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in charge of enforcing it. It’s since been followed by California, Wisconsin and North Carolina and is somewhere in the state legislative or regulatory maze in Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New York, Texas, Kansas, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and others.

John Ambrose’s battle for a national definition goes back 36 years. He said the issue is of great importance to North Carolina because it has more beekeepers than any other state in the country.

He and others tried to convince FDA that a single national standard for honey to help prevent adulterated honey from being sold was needed. The agency promised him it would be on the books within two years.

“But that never happened,” said Ambrose, a professor and entomologist at North Carolina State University and apiculturist, or bee expert. North Carolina followed Florida’s lead and passed its own identification standards last year.

Ambrose, who was co-chair of the team that drafted the state beekeeper association’s honey standards says the language is very simple, ”Our standard says that nothing can be added or removed from the honey. So in other words, if somebody removes the pollen, or adds moisture or corn syrup or table sugar, that’s adulteration,” Ambrose told Food Safety News.

But still, he says he’s asked all the time how to ensure that you’re buying quality honey. ”The fact is, unless you’re buying from a beekeeper, you’re at risk,” was his uncomfortably blunt reply.

Eric Silva, counsel for the American Honey Producers Association said the standard is a simple but essential tool in ensuring the quality and safety of honey consumed by millions of Americans each year.

“Without it, the FDA and their trade enforcement counterparts are severely limited in their ability to combat the flow of illicit and potentially dangerous honey into this country,” Silva told Food Safety News.

It’s not just beekeepers, consumers and the industry that FDA officials either ignore or slough off with comments that they’re too busy.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer is one of more than 20 U.S. senators and members of Congress of both parties who have asked the FDA repeatedly to create a federal “pure honey” standard, similar to what the rest of the world has established.

They get the same answer that Ambrose got in 1975: ”Any day now.”

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://voices.yahoo.com/could-cinnamon-fake-609394.html

Fall is the season of warm and spicy colors to warm and spicy foods. One of my favorite flavors of the autumn season is cinnamon. It reminds me of apple cobbler, apple pie, cinnamon cake, pumpkin pie and so many more traditional homemade foods. It comes originally from Asian as far back as 4,000 years ago and holds a permanent position in many American's spice cabinets. A few years ago I talking to a friend that was going through culinary school, I learned at that time what many people have in their spice cabinet is most likely not cinnamon.

This topic of mock cinnamon had not crossed my mind for years, until I heard from America's Test Kitchen (my favorite PBS cooking show) the same information that was passed down from my friend - that real cinnamon usually is not used in America. America's Test Kitchen reassured that this "cinnamon" that I have in my kitchen may not be the cinnamon that I have fallen in love with all these autumn seasons. In fact, the "cinnamon" that is really being sold and used in America is a close cousin of the true deal.

When the Egyptians first purchased cinnamon from Asia all those years back, it was made from a tropical evergreen tree called Cinnamomum zeylanicum. One thing that I did not know was that the real cinnamon such as first sold in Asia has grown in cost throughout the last 100 years and hence it has not been available in America for those 100 years. Apparently, European scientists found that cinnamon has a healing power and works great for medicinal uses; hence the popularity has grown along with the price. The price grew so much in fact that it has not been purchased in America for 100 years. So, unless you had cinnamon over 100 years ago, you may have never tasted the real deal. Or, if you were like me you have tasted real cinnamon while living abroad in Asia where it is much cheaper to purchase.

So you ask, "What are we eating?" Well, there is an imported tropical evergreen that is much cheaper called Cinnamomum cassia. This special type of cinnamon is much stronger with a fuller body than the original cinnamon that is actually 100% cinnamon. The cost of this cinnamon cousin is much cheaper because it grows in more than one area and has a number of different cassias that can be used. Consumers have not recognized this though since real cinnamon has not been sold in America for years and since it has the same appearance as the 100% real cinnamon. Some brands will state which type of cinnamon tree it is from on the bottle however most do not.

With this in mind, America's Test Kitchen has taken control of the situation and taste tested fake cinnamon versus the real cinnamon. The taste testing included one real cinnamon sample and ten cousin cinnamons most popular in grocery stores which are from Indonesia, Vietnam and China. Five of these ten fake cinnamons were from major supermarket brands and five were from major American spice houses. The taste test only included ground cinnamon, not sticks.

There were three tastes with three results:

Taste Test #1. Taste testing at Peter Kump's New York Cooking School which had 20 taste testers testing the appearance and aroma of each sample plain and also tasted a strong dose of each in apple sauce. These testers found that the real cinnamon was slightly medicinal or chalky with notes of citrus and clove.

Taste Test #2. Taste testing in Cook's test kitchen which had 20 taste testers testing the appearance and aroma of each sample plain and also tasted a strong dose of each in apple sauce. These testers found that the real cinnamon was slightly medicinal or chalky with notes of citrus and clove.

Taste Test #3. Finally, nine members of the Cook's editorial staff tasted the various cinnamons in cinnamon icebox cookies and in applesauce. Unfortunately the taste testers found that the cookies did not work out because the other dominating ingredients were over-powering the judgment on the cinnamons.

The final decision was that the real cinnamon has been gone too long in the American kitchens to still be enjoyed as much as the cousin to it. In fact, most taste-testers found it was not "cinnamon-y" enough. I found this the same when I had cinnamon in Japan and South Korea. The Chinese winner was Chinese cassia ordered from Penzeys. In fact, this won first place among all the taste testers. The second favorite sample was a Vietnamese cassia which is called McCormick/Schilling Premium cinnamon. The cinnamon of choice from Indonesia Cassia was Korintje cassia. Two of the mail order and two of the grocery store brands were preferred over the others, so it really does not matter where it is purchased.

So, in reality we as Americans are not eating and drinking real cinnamon with our favorite fall foods. Even though this is a fact, our American taste-buds have grown in favoritism for the cousin of the popular European medicinal ingredient of cinnamon; we would rather prefer to have the fake cinnamon for its strong and full body taste.

[NeonLX]

Screw it. I'm going back to an all-Twinkie diet.

[conniption]

Screw it. I'm going back to an all-Twinkie diet.

Are you sure they're real twinkies?


I guess I spaced and should have added these articles to the Corruption of Food Production Thread.

Dummy me.

Can you fix, PW?

[MayDay]

Which big agra corporations own your favorite 'organic' brands?


Hain Celestial- Institutional holdings: 94%
Top institutions: Jennison Associates LLC, Vanguard Group, Goldman Sachs, etc.
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/hain/insti ... l-holdings

[seemslikeadream]

Fake food: Criminal gangs move from drugs to a new 'underground economy'

Industrial dye in children's sweets and tens of thousands of fake vodka are among the products to have been seized
KASHMIRA GANDER Author Biography Sunday 23 February 2014
Fake food pedalled by organised criminal gangs that could be harming children and people who suffer from allergies is being sold across Europe, it has been reported.

It is believed drug gangs have moved to counterfeiting food as the penalties are far lower than those for narcotic-related crime.

Products seized in the UK recently include goat’s milk diluted with cow’s milk, and cheaper peanut powder used instead of almond flour, which could seriously harm people with allergies.

Other illegal products include children’s sweets containing the carcinogenic industrial red dye Rhodamine B, 17,156 litres of fake vodka found in a 40ft lorry, and 22 tons of long-grain rice to be sold as high-quality basmati.

The findings follow the horse meat scandal last year, when horse DNA was found in meat labelled as beef, and was partly blamed on a difficult-to-trace chain of factories across Europe.

Huw Watkins, head of the intelligence hub at the Government’s Intellectual Property Office and who formerly worked to fight human trafficking, told The Sunday Times: “Food fraud — in a similar way to tackling human trafficking — requires us to collaborate across borders, so we are working with the Food Standards Agency (FSA), Interpol and Europol.

“The overriding concern is public safety.”

He added: “There are cases with ‘best-quality Italian olive oil’ where the olives come from Spain or other countries and, because the olives have fermented, they have been washed through with deodorant. In the UK the biggest foodstuff problem is counterfeit alcohol.”

This includes the case of a leading British supermarket that was found to be unknowingly stocking fake wine, which was later removed from sale.

A man holds grains of rice, unrelated to the counterfeit basmati. A man holds grains of rice, unrelated to the counterfeit basmati.
Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, the pan-European police intelligence organisation, has called fake food “a major new part of the underground economy”.

The disclosure comes as Britain’s Food and Environment Agency plans to launch the EU’s Food Integrity project at a conference in York, which is to commission €3m (£2.5m) of research into food fraud.

Operation Opson, a joint Interpol/Europol investigation, revealed it had already found more than 1,200 tons of counterfeit food and nearly 430,000 litres of drinks.

When an illegal abattoir in Paris was shut down recently, fake olive oil, vinegar, biscuits, chocolate bars and honey were confiscated. Meanwhile, in the Philippines nearly 150,000 fake stock cubes were seized.

Mike Ellis, head of Interpol’s trafficking in illicit goods unit, told The Sunday Times that gangs are using increasingly sophisticated machinery.

“In Qatar we found a re-labelling machine, which was designed with the illegal purpose of changing expiry dates on drinks labels. Then, we found one exactly the same in Africa.”

The news follows a report in early February showing that shoppers are at risk of buying “fake food” including ham on pizza that is “meat emulsion” or poultry, prawns that are 50 per cent water, and fruit juice containing additives not permitted in the EU.