A video on EuroNews says there is a process called “geographical provincing” that detects an element signature of plants — identifies the dirt where it was grown.

Apparently this type of research is being done (funded?) to trace drugs like heroin and marijuana. Science Daily has a detailed story on how this started and the goals of law enforcement — police in Alaska wanted to see if they could prove that marijuana seized in raids was grown at lower latitudes, and to see if they could defeat a “grown for personal use” argument.

The drug issues are interesting but the title and script of the EuroNews video raises a whole new debate. It suggests that someone is thinking about using these signatures for other types of plants. They give the example of Darjeeling Tea, which has at least three times the amount of tea labeled Darjeeling than is actually grown.

Almost 40 million kg is sold as “Darjeeling Tea” when the actual production capacity is just 10 million. Most of this teas comes from Sri Lanka and Kenya and in an effort to stop this market a logotype is developed. Some of the fake tea is called Lanka Darjeeling or Hamburg Darjeeling but most of the time it’s called Pure Darjeeling.

Is there demand for authenticity? Most people eat unauthentic meals without worry. Consider Wisconsin cheddar in America. Cheddar is the name of a village in England where the cheese is supposed to be from. Courts have ruled however that the name is now generic due to use by imitators so you can basically call anything you want a cheddar. Feta cheese, which has been far less copied, can keep its protected status. With this in mind it turns out that America has formally opposed the use of geographical indicators:

The stakes for the United States are high not only because of the potential loss of generic names, but also because the country uses certain marks–under U.S. trademark law–to protect geographical indications. U.S. agricultural product exports are potentially threatened because U.S. certification marks would not be protected. GI protection would take precedence over certification marks, as indicated in the EU proposal.

Harm from loss of generic names? Wine and Spirits, under Article 23 of TRIPS from the WTO, seems to be the only category supported by the US but even that is not safe, as I have written before here and here. Budweiser, for example, was a name copied from a company in the Czech Republic that used it for five hundred years before America even existed.

Thus, while element signatures and authenticity of a product sounds great for consumers it probably will be tied up in a complicated international legal battle over generics and imitations. It could be fun to imagine tea kettles that would test and only brew authentic leaves, or coffee pots that would alarm on unauthentic grounds (pun not intended), but history says the market will drive more innovation in imitation rather than warm up to tools that detect what is “real”. Maybe if they marketed it as a tool to detect what is safe? Nobody wants a potato from Chernobyl soil. Then again it might make more sense just to detect contaminants instead of geographic location.

A reader from Apple forwarded me a story of the Vermont Press Bureau that says a popular tour shuttered over terrorism concerns.

The story centers around an issue of establishing role-based access to production; only trusted people with a business need should be allowed access. An industrial maple syrup facility that supplies chain stores and big box retailers is the example given in Vermont.

Their dilemma was whether to spend money on role-based access controls that can control visitors within the production area or use existing ones at the perimeter that disallow visitors. They chose to cancel their tours rather than upgrade security controls.

“One of fallouts of those guidelines was to restrict access to food plants a lot more than they ever have been in past,” says Dave Fusaro, editor-in-chief at Food Processing, an industry trade magazine. “Maybe the biggest loss was the plant tour. Used to be you could bring a Boy Scout troop in and walk right through. That ain’t going to happen anymore.”

Maple Grove, which bottles about 12 million pounds of maple syrup a year, is a mainstay on tour-bus itineraries. Jones says the company welcomes close to 120,000 people annually to its St. Johnsbury factory. But access to major retailers like Walmart and chain grocery stores, Jones says, outweigh the benefits of the company’s popular tour.

Unsubstantiated fear tactics unfortunately appear to be behind this decision.

Frank Busta, director emeritus of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, says the new guidelines aren’t an overreaction.

“Let me paint you a scenario,” he says. “If someone got to a vulnerable location and got something into 1,000 gallons of maple syrup that went out in six-ounce bottles, and that got distributed rapidly in some big supermarket chain — wow. What a catastrophe.”

That makes maple syrup seem like some kind of essential food that everyone is going to eat three times a day. Instead I can imagine 1,000 gallons of maple syrup sitting unused in pantries and closets all over America. Even one incident is tragic but hyperbole about the vulnerability and threat does not help.

Let us take as an assumption that industrialized additives such as High Fructose Corn Syrup and Trans Fats are controversial at best and proven to be harmful at worst. How much of that “something” is being “distributed rapidly in some big supermarket chain”?

Yes, what a real catastrophe that is happening today as opposed to a theoretical one from potential terrorists. Tens of millions of seriously unhealthy people suffering from a lack of security control. Where does the National Center for Food Protection and Defense stand on this issue?

Here is another scenario. Meat. There are small batch catering incidents

…the June 13, 2009 nuptials were part of a notorious trio of salmonella outbreaks caused by an unlicensed caterer who served tainted beef and noodle salad at two weddings and a family reunion.

The three incidents sickened 180 people, hospitalized 10 — and now serve as a warning about the dangers of foodborne illness from catered events.

There also are big batch meat poisoning cases. One of just nine major beef recalls in 2009 was the Christmas Eve E.coli O157:H7 incident that involved 248,000 pounds of beef.

At least 21 people in 16 states have fallen ill after eating contaminated meat pulled from restaurants last month as part of a beef recall.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that recalled National Steak and Poultry beef products have been linked to 21 E. coli food poisoning cases, which have resulted in at least nine people being hospitalized.

371,000 people are hospitalized and 5,700 die each year — almost twice the number from 9/11 — according to the CDC. Are food security experts taking this into account when they say we should worry about terrorism in the food supply?

Consider that 143 million pounds of beef was recalled in 2008 alone!

A quick scan of the Current Recalls and Alerts from the FSIS of the USDA shows a long list of beef, chicken and pork products. It seems fairly normal for a plant to operate with unsanitary and unsafe production until inspectors eventually trace harm back to it, and then the plant is shutdown with a warning sent out to tens of millions of consumers.

Thus, although the “post 9/11” terror scenario grabs people’s attention it really does not reflect the reality of risk and food security in America.

Consumers eat products laced with “something” seriously harmful to their health as a regular practice and meat products continue to be recalled with thousands killed every year.

Maple Grove reported 120,000 visitors annually yet how many incidents did they have with food poisoning let alone terrorism? Enforcing role-based access makes sense to counter an outsider threat such as a terrorist if it is real but what is the actual likelihood of this outsider threat?

The evidence actually points to insider threats (e.g. chemists trying to maximize shelf-life with non-food additives, industrialized and catered meat) as the far greater and more immediate threat to health and safety.