Safety groups in the UK are pressing for a ban on artificial food colors, according to the BBC News:

A food safety watchdog has called for a Europe-wide ban on six artificial food colourings after research found a link with hyperactivity in children.

A total ban on the use of the colours would have to be agreed by the EU.

So the Foods Standard Agency wants UK ministers to push for voluntary removal of the colours by next year.

I love this nugget of wisdom from the agency:

But the FSA added that as there were no nutritional benefits from the additives, there would be no cost or risk to the child in removing them from the diet.

The article quotes a food industry representative who says companies are already working to remove certain artificial color ingredients from food. I guess this is what is meant by a voluntary ban.

Sunset yellow (E110) – Colouring found in squashes
Carmoisine (E122) – Red colouring in jellies
Tartrazine (E102) – New colouring in lollies, fizzy drinks
Ponceau 4R (E124) – Red colouring
Quinoline yellow (E104) – Food colouring
Allura red AC (E129) – Orange/red food dye

I just checked the last entry on Wikipedia, Allura red AC, and found that this was introduced in the US to replace E123 and is derived from coal tar and a South and Central American beetle.

Disgusting.

The other colors listed above are related, and probably have a similar source. All of them are already banned in Denmark, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria.

America has not only approved it for food, according to Wikipedia, but also for cosmetics, tatoo inks, and last but not least drugs including…children’s medications!

With no “cost or risk” of removing the dye, and voluntary or legal bans in other countries, why are they still so popular in America? Go figure.

The regulatory body in the US seems lax to me, but an article in the Chemical & Engineering News praises the FDA for “strictly controlled conditions” and “very high standards of purity”. Notice they do not say “healthy”.

No matter where it comes from, any color added to our food is carefully regulated by the Food & Drug Administration to ensure it is safe to eat and is correctly labeled.

Ensure is such a definitive word. Safe to eat?

According to literature provided by Sensient, a major ingredient in the bitter Italian liquor Campari is an exempt dye called carminic acid. This vibrant magenta additive originates from the dried, crushed bodies of pregnant female scale insects called cochineal

I see. Apparently insects qualify as a natural source, so the regulators give them an exemption from being certified but they still have to be approved. It appears the FDA favors blurring the lines, with a cynical view of “natural”, while EU nations are seeking greater safety in their language and for the health of their children.

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.