You probably haven’t heard anything about this group of toxic chemicals for almost six years. Formed during combustion processes such as waste incineration, they’re known to increase the likelihood of cancer after long-term low level exposure. At higher levels, dioxins can be disfiguring or deadly.
It was six years ago that the world first saw a clear example of the damage that dioxins can cause. The face of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was heavily scarred, the effect of a chloracne outbreak after suspected dioxin poisoning. He might have been poisoned with as little as a drop and significant amounts of poison could remain in his system for the rest of his life.
Wikipedia paints a much scarier portrait of the 70+ isomers of highly toxic, man-made organic compounds. Byproducts of some industrial processes and waste incineration, “dioxins are fat-soluble, so they tend to accumulate in the tissues of the animals who encounter them and it can take many years for the compounds to break down. Any person living in an industrialized country has dioxins in his or her body–we ingest them when we eat animal fats or animal-fat byproducts.”
The online information source says “It’s unclear how harmful these low doses could be. Some animals begin to show symptoms of poisoning when they’re given doses only two or three times the level of dioxins in the average person’s body. At higher concentrations, though, there is no doubt about its severity: Dioxin poisoning can cause organ disease, an increased risk of cancer and heart attacks, a suppressed immune system, hormonal imbalances, diabetes, menstrual problems, increased hair growth, weight loss, and, most obviously, the facial cysts known as chloracne.
When German health officials found traces of dioxin in feed supplies in early January, they immediately banned eggs, pork and poultry and ordered the destruction of 8,000 chickens and a temporary ban on more than 1,000 farms from selling eggs. For the public, the ban quickly grew from a temporary inconvenience to a full-blown food crisis when the ban expanded and more than 4,500 farms were closed.
News reports coming from the EU say dioxin contamination was traced to animal feed laced with industrial fats that were substituted for vegetable fats at some point in the manufacturing process. The contamination was extreme–up to 77 times acceptable levels of dioxin were present in samples taken at Harles and Jentzsch, the firm at the center of the scandal over contaminated animal feed. The company had accidentally mixed oils intended for use in biofuels with oils intended for animal feed.
Concerned European Union officials have already called for stricter regulations and more severe penalties, putting increased pressure on food manufacturers to use more sensitive detection instrumentation.
In a move that could signal similar restrictions in the U.S., German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner unveiled a 10-point plan to safe-guard animal feed.
“We will significantly increase safety standards and sharpen obligations to notify authorities and the duty to inspect,” she said. “Consumers expect this and we are going to do it.”
The plan calls for:
1. Feed producers to obtain product and ingredient authorization. 2. Separation of production flows. 3. Expansion of legal requirements for feed production. 4. Private laboratories to report and positive tests. 5. A binding positive list of feedstuffs. 6. An obligation to cover liability. 7. Revision of the system of penalties. 8. Expansion of dioxin monitoring to establish an early-warning system. 9. Improvement of the quality of food and feed controls and inspection. 10. Transparency for consumers.
A Maryland orchard whose apple cider has been associated with an outbreak of E. coli announced last week that it may change the way it processes its product.
A news report in the Carroll County Times suggested that Baugher’s Orchard and Farm in Westminister may pasteurize next season’s cider.
Last October, an epidemiological investigation by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene revealed a potential association between Baugher’s unpasteurized cider and seven E. coli O157:H7 infections. Three of the people sickened in the outbreak were hospitalized and five of the cases were children under 18.
Consumption of unpasteurized cider was believed to be the link, but microbiological sampling at the farm did not corroborate the finding of the epidemiological studies. The newspaper reported that the health department was unable to test the batch of cider suspected of being contaminated.
Without confirmation of the cause of the cluster of E. coli infections in Maryland, “There’s no way of knowing if we had anything to do with it,” Dwight Baugher, the farm manager, told the newspaper.
Epidemiological studies can not prove causation, but they can demonstrate that a risk factor is correlated with a high incidence of disease in a population exposed to that risk–such as patients infected with identical strains of E. coli who report drinking apple cider from the same farm.
That commonality led Maryland health authorities to issue a warning about a potential risk associated with Baugher’s cider on Nov. 4, 2010. Baugher’s Orchard and Farm then recalled all its cider.
E. coli O157:H7 infections are the result of fecal contamination in food. In many of the E. coli outbreaks involving unpasteurized cider, the problem was traced back to apples harvested from the ground that had come into contact with animal feces.
After a California girl died from drinking unpasteurized juice contaminated with E. coli in 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines to help producers keep their fruit and vegetable juices free of dangerous bacteria. The guidelines call for what the FDA says are proven safety methods, including Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) controls and heat pasteurization.
Grocery stores, health food stores, cider mills, and farm markets that sell untreated, packaged juice made on site must keep the product refrigerated and are required to label it: ”WARNING: This product has not been pasteurized and therefore may contain harmful bacteria that can cause serious illness in children, the elderly, and persons with weakened immune systems.”
But the FDA does not require warning labels for juice or cider that is fresh-squeezed and sold by the glass at orchards, farm markets, roadside stands, or in some restaurants or juice bars. The agency recommends that consumers should ask whether such cider or apple juice has been treated.
Although the headline in the Carroll County Times stated that the Baugher farm will pasteurize its cider in the future, the story was somewhat more equivocal, quoting Baugher as saying cider production would resume but “how is not really determined.”
A lawsuit against Baugher’s Orchard and Farm has been filed on behalf of a Baltimore resident, Nicholas Fickel, who became ill after drinking cider at the farm. The lawsuit was filed by the Maryland-based Ward and Klein Law Office and Seattle food safety law firm, Marler Clark, sponsor of Food Safety News. Fickel, through his attorneys, said he wanted to raise awareness of the dangers in consuming unpasteurized cider.
One of the main purposes for my writing in this space each Sunday is to keep Food Safety News readers informed about FSN.
Everyone on the production end of this venture is pretty happy with how things are going. The techies always have us looking at something they call “analytics.” They don’t measure “readers” per se, but rather something they call “unique visits” to our site. Then there are a couple thousand people who have signed up for our RSS feeds.
The way I look at it, Food Safety News is getting about 30,000 readers a week, and easily topping 100,000 a month. These numbers are growing nicely, and we’ve only been around since Sept. 14, 2009.
It is also worth noting that one out of four FSN readers hails from Washington D.C. We think it’s good that we have the federal government’s attention.
Where else in the world are FSN readers and where are they working? We can take a “slice in time” approach, looking at a typical three-day period earlier this month. It provides evidence of both a worldwide audience and a food safety community that cuts across government, industry, and non-profit worlds.
Top Countries
USCanadaUKChinaGermany IndiaAustraliaJapanNetherlands MalaysiaPhilippines SingaporeHong Kong
Top Cities
Washington D.C. New YorkSeattleGarrett Park LAChicagoAtlantaPortlandStillwater MinneapolisLondonSan FranciscoDenverHopkinsSt. Louis
Top Organizations
USDA Oklahoma State University CargillAgriculture and Agrifood Canada United States Senate Wal-Mart KelloggState of MinnesotaPepsi Cola Co/North AmericaTreehouseEmirates (Dubai)Japan networkState of OregonCDCB & G foods IncHouse of RepresentativesWashington State Department of HealthConagraOhio State UniversityUniversity of MinnesotaAbbot LaboratoriesState of WashingtonDepartment of Homeland SecurityKraftWashington State Department of AgricultureGuangdong Province (China)New Mexico State UniversityRuby TuesdayGeneral MillsSeattle Pacific UniversityPew Charitable Trusts
Again these are just snapshots in time, but important feedback telling us that there is a food safety community out there, and you are all part of it. We do not just want you as a reader; we also invite your comments and contributed articles and opinions.
Until next week.
Fat and salt-laden school food beware. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday unveiled proposed nutritional standards for meals served through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, the first major upgrade to nutritional requirements in 15 years. The tougher standards are part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, recently signed into law by President Obama, that aims to reduce both childhood hunger and obesity.
The proposed standards would add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat milk to the meals the government pays for, or subsidizes, for around 32 million schoolchildren daily. Saturated fat, sodium, calories and trans fats would all have stricter limits under the new rule.
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack told reporters Thursday that USDA would help give schools and communities the tools needed to make the transition to healthier meals. ”There are a number of ways school districts can address this without breaking the bank.”
“Raising a healthier generation of kids will require hard work and commitment of a host of partners,” said Vilsack. ”We understand that these improved meal standards may present challenges for some school districts, but the new law provides important new resources, technical assistance and flexibility to help schools raise the bar for our kids.”
The produce industry reacted enthusiastically to the standards, recognizing the opportunity to not only increase sales to the school meal programs, but also to help foster increased long-term produce consumption.
“Fruits and vegetables are the stars of USDA’s goal for healthier school meals, and kids and the produce industry will benefit,” said Dr. Lorelei DiSogra, United Fresh Produce Association vice president of nutrition and health.
Author and food policy expert Marion Nestle lauded the standards, but lamented that there were some loopholes.
“The new standards allow skim ‘flavored’ milk (translation: sugar-sweetened),” said Nestle on her Food Politics website. “Otherwise, says USDA, kids might not drink milk and will not get enough calcium. Sigh. Milk, as I keep saying, is not an essential nutrient. Chocolate or strawberry milk is a dessert. Chalk this one up to dairy lobbying.”
USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service is seeking public comment on the new standards through April 13. The new standards could be put in place by the time the 2011-12 school year kicks off in the fall.
Editor’s note: If you had a magic wand, how would you conjure up sustainable ways to make the food supply safe? We asked several people to consider the possibilities. Here is another response, from Dr. Richard Raymond, former Undersecretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
If I had a Food Safety Magic Wand … that would be a daunting development, so to make it less daunting and to stay more focused, I am going to assume my Magic Wand is to primarily make our meat and poultry products safer. I will let the former FDA food safety leaders pen their own cures for what ails the food safety arena that FDA has responsibility for.
But before I focus primarily on the U.S Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) responsibility for meat, poultry and egg products safety, I want to repeat, briefly, what I said in an article for Food Safety News that was posted Jan. 3, 2011, and can be read in its entirety here. I am going to use my Magic Wand to improve food safety by using its powers to give the USDA and its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulatory authority over all animals and animal products, including all fish and seafood, bison, dairy products and eggs, and to give FDA regulatory authority over all canned and bottled goods, and processed entities like frozen pizzas, sandwiches and flavoring. The meat in these proposed FDA products has already been inspected and passed. Adding pepperoni to a pizza that contains spinach, green onions, tomatoes, cheese, pepper and other products that have been linked to foodborne illnesses does not change the public health risk, nor does adding beef to the vegetables in vegetable beef soup increase risk. But these additions of meat do add cost by now requiring daily inspection of the product.
The savings produced by moving these very low risk products to the FDA could be used to increase the inspection of animals and animal products, such as eggs and oysters, that are now FDA responsibility and have been linked to foodborne illnesses by daily FSIS inspection.
The very next thing I would use my wand for is to declare whole carcass, low dose, non-penetrating irradiation to be a processing aid, not a food additive. That done, the industry can now embrace the concept, explore its applications, and over the next few years begin to significantly decrease the pathogen load on carcasses prior to the application of other processing aids down the line, greatly reducing our risks of falling ill from consuming meat.
And, since industry will now have this very important tool to help it produce a safer product, I am now going to declare all non-O157:H7 Shigatoxin producing E coli strains to be adulterants. At the same time, I am going to take personal risk using the Wand as my protective shield and establish a tolerance level for E coli. Before you declare me clinically insane, think about the effectiveness of the current “zero tolerance” policy. It is, at this time at least, unobtainable and non-enforceable. Develop a realistic tolerance level that is reachable with today’s interventions, and then enforce it. Allow FSIS to bring action against those few plants that provide the greatest risk to the public with their product.
And speaking of plants that impose a risk, I am also waving my wand at FSIS and mandating that they do trace back to the source of contamination to the very best of their ability. For example, in the FSIS testing program for 2010, 64 ground beef samples were positive for E coli O157:H7. Of those positives, 29 were found at plants that used only outside source material and did no slaughter of their own. And, these 29 plants used only one source in the tested lot. And that same product from that source was most likely sold to other processors as well. Yet FSIS maintains that so much ground beef is a blended product from multiple sources that trace back is next to impossible. Magic Wand, fix this. Find the source and take action.
We have other products available to assist us in making our products safer, but sometimes the bureaucracy of having three agencies (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, FDA and FSIS) with overlapping oversight of these products produces little movement in the approval process, as we saw with the E. coli vaccine. So I will use the powers of the Wand to declare that Phage treatments are a processing aid, not a food additive, and can therefore be used on primals and trim without labeling restrictions.
Before my Magic Wand’s powers weaken, I want to accelerate the research on the efficacy of the E coli vaccines. One way I will do this is to provide tax incentives for those companies willing to spend their own resources in this effort. Heck, I think I will provide tax incentives for any research into more effective ways to produce a safer product. And then I will wave the wand again, and make FSIS a more cooperative partner with plants looking for new ways to improve safety, and become less of a hindrance to them.
Now that my wand has effectively provided me with the information to declare the E. coli vaccine to be a very effective pre-harvest tool in reducing E coli in beef, I am going to declare the pathogen to be an environmental hazard worthy of the government’s attention to reduce its presence. Produce is accountable for 34 percent of all E. coli O157:H7 foodborne illnesses, ground beef being responsible for 33 percent, according to Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One-third of E. coli illnesses are not even related to food, but come from our drinking water, recreational water, petting zoos and person-to-person contact. We need to get it out of the environment to save lives. T hat means reducing it in cattle. The vaccine will help us get there.
But why should the rancher, feeder or packer bear this expense? Ultimately it will be the purchaser of beef that pays the price. So, Magic Wand, make the government develop and pay for a mandatory vaccination program for beef that will save children’s lives, just like they do for most childhood vaccines available now. The federal government took positive steps to reduce or eliminate Bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis, it should do it for E. coli O157:H7. It would truly have to be magical, but, when weather permits, washing cattle in the feed lots or on the farms, before loading into trucks and hauling to the holding pens, would effectively reduce the pathogen loads in and around the slaughter facilities. And the Magic Wand is going to try to find out what truly causes “event days” in beef slaughter facilities so preventive measures can be introduced and implemented by all facilities. And this just might include changes in facility design to reduce pathogens being introduced by measures other than just the cattle.
I think the Magic Wand, if it has any energy left after taking on the payment method for the E. coli vaccination program, will probably do the same thing for Salmonella vaccines in our poultry flocks.
And then the Wand is going to help me convene a high-level conference on antibiotic use in food animals, and the participants will come willing to listen and to learn, and to stop the non-productive claims that are so often repeated. There is a middle ground here that can be reached but, if it is not, Congress will come along and create problems like it did with catfish inspection.
Speaking of Congress, the Magic Wand will give me the power to immediately rescind the actions of Congress that prohibit FSIS from moving forward with risk-based inspection. This was a budget neutral process that would have increased inspection activities in plants with poor safety records and/or producing high risk products, and would have reduced inspection activities in plants with stellar safety records and plants producing extremely safe products.
The Wand holder feels this will be easier to accomplish now that Congress has mandated in the Food Safety Modernization Act that the FDA use risk as a key element in determining inspection levels and frequency.
While on the subject of high risk products, frozen ground beef patties are a special problem. When cooked in restaurants with validated and documented kill steps, frozen patties are not a problem. But when cooked at tail gate parties, pool parties, camp grounds, etc, we have a problem. I might lend the Magic Wand to someone else and let them decide whether to ban the sale of frozen GB patties at retail, or to require that the meat be irradiated with penetrating beams.
And lastly, while the Wand still has some energy left in it and powers to create change, I am going to try and make that final kill step in all homes and restaurants and institutions a reality. My plan will use the same energy and resources that the government used to educate us all about the switch to cable television and the “dangers” of Y2K to help the American public understand that raw meat and poultry should not be considered sterile. As a result of this education effort, the majority of the American public will now know how to safely handle raw meats and poultry and, most importantly, how to measure the internal temperature for doneness. Actually, this should probably have been the first action taken using the power of the Magic Wand. It is by far the most important and will have most immediate effect on the safety of meat and poultry products.
