US Representative Sam Farr recently posted some interesting data on food safety in America:

Three Committees with jurisdiction over food safety legislation continue to hold hearings. The Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture held a hearing to review the legal and technological capacity for full traceability in fresh produce while the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Investigation and Oversight held a hearing regarding the Recent Salmonella Outbreak: Lessons Learned and Consequences to Industry and Public Health. The Agriculture Appropriations Committee on which I sit will hold hearings in September on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) amended budget request asking for an additional $125 million in spending and an additional 259 employees relating to its food safety mission.

While I don’t’ believe it will happen this year, it likely will occur in the next Congress. There have been ninety-five (95) different bills introduced in 110th Congress just to let you know of the myriad of ideas being discussed to reorganize the 15 federal agencies collectively administering at least 30 laws related to food safety as identified by the Government Accounting Office (GAO). Streamlining and modernizing this system is paramount if we are ever to achieve accountability while maintaining a safe and wholesome food supply.

I have not had time to digest the details, so I wonder first of all if anyone has proposed that the food safety systems report under Homeland Security.

I had no idea this was even an issue, but apparently the lawsuit has been going on for three years and that is after a prior settlement with fast-food companies over the same violations. The Associated Press reports:

California sued H.J. Heinz Co., Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods Inc., and Lance Inc. in 2005, alleging they violated a state requirement that companies post warning labels on products with carcinogens.

The companies avoided trial by agreeing to pay a combined $3 million in fines and reduce the levels of acrylamide in their products over three years, officials said.

The FDA says the dangers of high doses of acrylamide in food were only just discovered in 2002. Here are the top five food types documented in 2006, with a mean AA intake greater than 0.027 kgbw-day:

1. French Fries
2. Potato Chips
3. Breakfast Cereal
4. Cookies
5. Brewed Coffee

Interesting that the lawsuit started when the data seems to have first become available. Must be more to the story. Also interesting that most employers in America provide chips and coffee to staff. Do they know they are killing them slowly with carcinogens?

I often go to a place now that keeps unlimited amounts of cheap processed breakfast cereal out in plastic tubs, and serves transfat products in baskets. I tried to explain the risk to facilities, but they said they had to buy whatever was cheapest. Sadly, I found it impossible to explain the irony of this insecure perspective. Until the harm is real and present, staring them down in the face and threatening their pocketbook, they play dumb.

The lack of warning or information from the FDA has been noticed elsewhere. A CSPI story from 2002 highlights a more global view of health and safety:

Today is the first day of a three-day closed meeting in Geneva of experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss the health ramifications of the acrylamide discovery, which has since been confirmed by the British, Swiss, and Norwegian governments. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) though, has been standing on the sidelines of what is fast becoming a major global debate, according to CSPI, which today called on the agency to treat acrylamide with greater seriousness.

“The FDA has been strangely silent about acrylamide,” CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said. “It should be advising consumers to avoid or cut back on the most contaminated and least nutritious foods while more testing is done across the food supply. The FDA also should be intensively investigating ways of preventing the formation of this carcinogen.”

California is suing, not the federal agencies. The story from 2002 did not make the big news, as far as I can tell, despite the impact to American national security as explained in 2002:

The amount of acrylamide in a large order of fast-food French fries is at least 300 times more than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows in a glass of water. Acrylamide is sometimes used in water-treatment facilities.

“I estimate that acrylamide causes several thousand cancers per year in Americans,” said Clark University research professor Dale Hattis. Hattis, an expert in risk analysis, based his estimate on standard EPA projections of risks from animal studies and limited sampling of acrylamide levels in Swedish and American foods.

With the EPA backing down from protection of consumers and wildlife, to favor industrial self-regulation, one can only presume states and citizens are on their own here to battle with those who would do them harm. Cheers to California for taking a stand on an important issue, just like breach notification laws.

One of the lessons of 9/11 was supposed to be greater centralized management of intelligence to improve security in America. It would seem that the salmonella outbreak is proving how well the US government has learned and adapted to the challenge.

The the Associated Press reports that fingers are pointing all over the place, and the industries losing money want answers:

One agency probably zeroed in on tomatoes too early, the committee concluded, while a second failed to tap industry and states’ expertise in trying to trace the source of the contamination.

To the chairman, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the case reminded him of “a Keystone Kops situation.” An investigation that should have taken hours or days instead has stretched on for weeks and months, he said.

This is just the detection side of things. Imagine if a TSA-like approach is used from now on for prevention…

Several lawmakers said the fact that no single agency is in charge may be part of the problem. The CDC is responsible for identifying the pathogen and the type of food that has been contaminated; the FDA is supposed to trace the outbreak to its source.

A single agency? Surely people can figure out how to collaborate? That is the message from outside the government as well:

Thomas Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, suggested that public health officials might want to tap outside sources.

“We’re not asking to run the investigation, but there’s an abundance of knowledge in the industry that can help protect public health,” he said.

Not sure I would trust the UFPA, given how tasteless and uniform-looking the tomatoes are in America. Even so, they should certainly be allowed to assist with investigations. Collaboration is good. Compliance and governance is good. Too bad people have such a hard time working together on this.

Separately, the FDA rejected the Mexican government’s assertion that U.S. investigators had erred in identifying irrigation water at a Mexican pepper farm as a possible source of contamination. Mexican authorities said Thursday the sample their U.S. counterparts called “a smoking gun” came from a tank that had not been used to irrigate crops for more than two months.

Have to keep all this in mind the next time I speak about using centralized management and correlation tools. Federation of information is probably the better answer for massive data-sets spanning organizational boundaries.

Disclaimer: I hate corn syrup with a passion. When I eat anything with corn syrup, I feel sluggish and groggy. It makes it hard for me to think and work, let alone do anything physical. I avoid the stuff like the plague.

How did I find this out, you ask? About eight years ago I worked at a startup that provided unlimited access to packaged food. There were snack bars and candy, as well as drinks, in huge abundance. I decided one day to eat nothing but one type/brand a day to see what would happen to my body.

Shortly after beginning the experiment, I noticed that I struggled to get my work done when I ate certain foods. Using the binary method (eliminating half and seeing if the results persist) I quickly narrowed the problem down to things sweetened with corn syrup.

Luna bars, for example, have no corn syrup. I could eat them all day and feel absolutely fine. Cliff bars also lack corn syrup. Powerbars, on the other hand, and Balance bars both made me so tired and unfocused that I had to extend deadlines in order to get my work completed.

Right, enough of my personal opinion on this awful disgusting substance. The FDA announcement tells me that I am correct in my assumptions:

Products containing high fructose corn syrup cannot be considered ‘natural’ and should not be labeled as such, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said.
The decision is likely to cause a massive stir in the food and beverage industry, where a discreet battle has been raging over the status of the controversial sweetener.

What really bothers me is that virtually every soda in the United States is laced with this stuff. I just came back from Canada, and there is not a drop in the same brands. Want safety from a can of Coke, go to Canada. If you drink the American variety, you are literally poisoning yourself with a non-natural sweetener that will do real harm to your health and productivity. Well, in my opinion of course, but it seems I am not too far from the facts on this one.

…in response to an inquiry from FoodNavigator-USA.com, the regulatory agency examined the composition of HFCS, which it said is produced using synthetic fixing agents.

“Consequently, we would object to the use of the term ‘natural’ on a product containing HFCS,” the agency’s Geraldine June said in an e-mail to FoodNavigator-USA.com. June is Supervisor of the Product Evaluation and Labeling team at FDA’s Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements.

[…]

“The use of synthetic fixing agents in the enzyme preparation, which is then used to produce HFCS, would not be consistent with our (…) policy regarding the use of the term ‘natural’,” said Geraldine June.

“Moreover, the corn starch hydrolysate, which is the substrate used in the production of HFCS, may be obtained through the use of safe and suitable acids or enzymes. Depending on the type of acid(s) used to obtain the corn starch hydrolysate, this substrate itself may not fit within the description of ‘natural’ and, therefore, HCFS produced from such corn starch hydrolysate would not qualify for a ‘natural’ labeling term,” she concluded.

Bottom line is that virtually all packaged foods in America are full of corn sweeteners, and you have to be extremely cautious if you want to eat something truly natural and healthy. The Ethicurian has an excellent summary of the issues. For example, they show a shift in public opinion that is impacting the more sensible brands:

Hansen’s says that 30% of consumer calls it received were asking for a change from HFCS to a more natural sugar. “Consumers asked and we listened,” is how one executive put it. This response is a refreshing change from the typical corporate doublespeak along the lines of “public pressure had nothing to do with our decision, it was planned long ago.”

Compare that with the perspective of the 900 pound gorilla:

The biggest driver of HFCS’s rise was the beverage industry, which nearly eliminated the use of sugar in its products in the early 1980s. I consulted several books about the history of Coca-Cola (including “For God, Country and Coca-Cola” and “Secret Formula”) and it appears that the change from sugar to HFCS was not a big deal within the company. There was a little bit of resistance from someone who had been with Coke for almost 60 years, but in the end the management could not resist the enormous financial benefits of the switch. “Secret Formula” claims that the savings from replacing 50% of Coke’s sugar with HFCS were $100 million per year in the early 1980s.

Good luck trying to tell Coca-Cola that you would prefer natural ingredients and the old recipe. They are sure to have put some of the $100 million a year in savings toward a lobbyist or PR firm ready to fight:

The researchers “give the impression that high-fructose corn syrup is the secret reason Americans are all obese, and that is patently false,” says Stephanie Childs of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade group representing Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo and others.

“High-fructose corn syrup is very similar to sugar in its chemical makeup. We are overweight and have an obesity epidemic because we have an imbalance in how many calories we consume and how many we burn,” she says.

Very similar but NOT THE SAME. Did I mention how much I hate corn syrup? I do not blame it for obesity, I find it a disgusting chemical that impacts my quality of life. I am happy that there are alternatives to chose from, and I hope that others can try living without it to see if they find similar benefits. That would be the real taste test. Jones soda seems to have figured this out. Hopefully more brands will follow.