Posted Wed, December 31, 2008
Filed under: Public Health Miscellaneous
When it comes to sizing up the purity of the honey you buy, you're pretty
much on your own.
You may be paying more for honey labeled "certified organic" or feel
reassured by the "USDA Grade A" seal, but the truth is, there are few
federal standards for honey, no government certification and no
consequences for making false claims.
For American-made honey, the "organic" boast, experts say, is highly
suspect. Beekeepers may be doing their part, but honeybees have a foraging
range of several miles, exposing them to pesticides, fertilizers and
pollutants on their way back to the hive.
And while they're required to put the country of origin on the label--a
fact that could help guide wary consumers--some honey producers don't
bother.
The head of one major honey company advises caution and warns that in the
enforcement of labeling laws.
"There is honey out there that is illegally and purposely mislabeled, an
adulterated product that is very difficult to stop," said Dwight Stoller,
chief executive of Kansas-based Golden Heritage Foods. "There's probably
not a lot, but it's still a real issue and consumers must be aware of
that."
Unless a shopper buys honey from a farmers market, where they can talk to
the person who raised the bees and bottled the honey, they're relying on
what's printed on the label.
Major supermarkets offer dozens of different brands, sizes, types and
flavors of honey for sale. Consumers might walk away with the
finest-tasting, highest-quality honey there is. Or they could end up with
an unlabeled blend, adulterated with impossible-to-detect cheap sweeteners
or illegal antibiotics.
Part of this is because of the government's failure to define what true
honey is, but the blame also goes to a handful of sleazy honey packers who
buy and sell cut-rate foreign honey, which usually has little problem
slipping past overstretched customs inspectors.
The Seattle P-I surveyed 60 honey products commonly sold in the Pacific
Northwest and found glowing praises of healthfulness, sincere promises of
quality and an endless selection of advertising adjectives touting honey
as the true elixir.
"100% Pure." "
"
The list goes on and on, but it's mostly hype, experts say.
"If somebody puts 'U.S. Grade A' on there, who's going to say it isn't?"
said Harriet Behar, outreach coordinator with the Midwest Organic and
Sustainable Education Service. "There's no enforcement, so people can say
whatever they want."
The government takes a minor role in the grading of honey. It's left
entirely up to the industry.
Stoller was the only one willing to discuss it openly. His company, with
beekeeping roots going back 90 years, is one of the nation's largest
suppliers of honey to retail outlets, the food-processing industry and
food service and restaurant-supply companies.
The government, he said, doesn't have the resources to set and enforce
needed standards. And that leads to inaccurate or misleading labeling.
"Some packers just slap on whatever they feel like," he said. "Whatever
they believe will attract the shopper to their product."
Where things really get sticky is the selling of "organic" honey--sold in
some form by every major chain.
Government, academic and industry experts insist that
is a myth. With rare exceptions, this country is too developed and uses
too many agricultural and industrial chemicals to allow for the production
of organic honey.
"Like other foods from free-roaming, wild creatures, it is difficult--and
in some places impossible--to assure that honey bees have not come in
contact with prohibited substances, like pesticides," said Chuck Benbrook,
chief scientist for the Organic Center, a national advocacy group for the
research and promotion of organic food.
Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture research, he said, shows that the
average hive contains traces of five or more pesticide residues.
Arthur Harvey of the International Association of Organic Inspectors, who
doubles as a
attempting to produce organic honey: what the beekeeper puts into the
hive, such as chemicals or medication of any kind; and the location of the
hive.
Can the bee fly to a place that can be a source of potential
contamination?
for organic honey.
"What USDA has said is that you can certify any product as organic as long
as you comply with existing regulation, but there are no regulations for
honey," he said. "That means the green USDA organic sticker on honey is
meaningless."
Across the globe, there are 30 different, wide-ranging certification
standards for organic honey, but there's no way for inspectors to detect
fraud,
violation of organic rules--for honey or any other product.
The Naturally Preferred honey brand, widely distributed by the Kroger
supermarket chain, has a USDA seal on the front label. On the back, it
boasts, "Certified Organic by the Washington State Department of
Agriculture."
Not so, say state officials.
The Washington State Department of Agriculture doesn't certify honey
"because we have no standards for organic honey," said agency spokesman
Mike Louisell.
"It shouldn't have WSDA on its label," he said, "because we don't do it."
Jerry Hayes, chief of the apiary section for the Florida Department of
Agriculture and Consumer Services, said there are no organic standards for
honey in the
radius of their colonies.
"They're flying dust mops and will pick up unbelievable amounts of
environmental contaminants," Hayes said.
Unlike most states, Florida has 15 full-time inspectors, a lab and other
resources dedicated to ensuring honey quality, and the state is poised to
do what the federal government hasn't--pass a law defining what honey is.
Consumers stand to benefit, said Dr. Marion Aller, who heads
food safety division.
"This will make enforcement of food safety easier," he said.
Aller said the honey industry supports the move because it's increasingly
concerned that products touted as "pure" actually may be cut with other
sugars or syrups.
budget for it.
Claudia Coles, food safety manager for the Agriculture Department, said
her staff inspects
only, as it does with 1,700 other licensed food processors statewide.
"But the quality analysis of honey - determining what's really in the
bottle - isn't something we have funding for," she said. "We struggle
first with issues of E. coli, pathogens that make people sick with acute
illnesses."
Some
honeys to the public.
Mike Ingalls, president of Pure Foods Inc. in Sultan, recently stood
beside a stack of brown steel drums in his warehouse. It's all marked
"Organic Honey" and "Product of Argentina" - and each drum carries a
sticker with a tracking number.
"I can use that number to track the honey back to the supplier in
minutes and seconds," he said, "so I can plot precisely where those hives
were, and that they were at least six miles away from any cultivated
crop."
While
product is currently in short supply so he's had to turn to South American
imports.
As for the domestic variety, he added: "We don't produce any organic honey
in the
The industry hopes
states and the USDA.
If so, it may provide law enforcement the tools it needs to stop the flood
of adulterated honey products.
Honey brokers and scientists say that not only is Chinese honey being
laundered in other countries to avoid stiff
but also it's being sold as "malt sweetener," "blended syrup" and "rice
syrup."
through an ultra-filtration process that is meant to remove contaminants.
Honey is heavily diluted with water, then repeatedly boiled and filtered
until it returns to a more natural consistency. Those who have tested and
tasted the filtered brew said the process can completely remove all traces
of contaminants, "including the color."
But there's a downside.
"In the process of taking out the chemicals, they also take out all the
good qualities of the honey. What the consumer is left with is a very
low-quality, sweet product--but certainly not honey," said Mark Brady,
president of the American Honey Producers Association.
"If it is cheap and packers can use it to blend into other dark, cheap
honey to make it lighter in color and taste a tad better, the ignorant
general consumer is none the wiser. Caveat emptor," he warned.
A warning consumers should be getting, but often don't, is a disclosure of
where their honey came from.
Federal law requires that the country of origin be printed on food labels,
but many companies offer no clue.
Nondisclosing companies range from small producers, such as Haggen Honey,
distributed from
Seattle Gourmet Foods, to national distributors such as Target and
Wal-Mart.
A Target spokeswoman wouldn't disclose where the discount retailer's honey
came from. But she said the Market Pantry Grade A honey "meets all USDA
and FDA inspection standards."
Linda Brown Blakley, a Wal-Mart senior spokesperson, said it's her
"understanding" that "if the honey is produced domestically, country of
origin need not be included on the label."
However, USDA says honey is considered a "perishable agricultural
commodity" and country of origin is required.
The label on Heins Organic Trail Honey, packaged by Pure Foods, errs on
the side of overdisclosure, listing five countries of origin:
isn't exactly right: He no longer imports from
old labels.
Besides its certified organic claims, Kroger's Naturally Preferred honey
also carries the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
That puzzles honey experts such as Behar.
"I don't know how Good Housekeeping can do this. They don't know anything
about honey standards," she said.
Good Housekeeping--a magazine owned by Hearst, the P-I's parent
company--confirmed that, in 2005, Naturally Preferred honey qualified for
the seal, a status that expired last month.
A magazine spokesperson said food products considered for the seal of
approval are evaluated for nutritional value based on "federal, standard
guidelines."
The USDA, however, said it doesn't have such standards for honey.
Consumer advocates warn shoppers not to put too much stock in seals of
approval--or even claims that the supermarket product with "honey" in the
name actually contains any.
Pringles' Honey Buttered Wheat Stix, for example, doesn't list honey among
its 30-plus ingredients.
A company representative said the snack is made in
artificial honey flavoring, not real honey. "We call it 'honey butter'
because that's what it tastes like," she said.
Honey Graham Crackers do contain honey--it's on the ingredient list after
sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. Ditto for Nabisco's Honey Maid Grahams
and 16 other brands of "honey" crackers, snacks and cereals the P-I
inspected.
Paul van Westendorp, the provincial apiculturist for
Ministry of Agriculture, said that in
tighten the regulations of honey labeling.
"The erosion of the label 'honey' has been going on for decades and
beekeepers have often been frustrated by the big food processors such as
General Mills, Kellogg's and many others for using honey in their
product-line advertising while the product contains little or no honey,"
he said.
"Is the consumer getting cheated? That depends entirely on what the label
says. The difference, of course, is that this type of product is typically
sold to the . . . uninformed consumer."
That practice is commonplace, said Diane Dunaway, who has studied honey
marketing and is editor of Bee-scene magazine, produced for Canadian
beekeepers in
"It's come down to consumers taking the time to read the ingredients list
on the product label versus the marketing text," she said.
"The folks who make Pringles aren't the first to exploit the
health-inspiring word 'honey' for profit. Companies like these and other
food processors are relying on the dumbing down of consumer awareness,"
Dunaway said.
As warm and cuddly as the honeybee is to Madison Avenue, she warned food
processors to tread carefully.
"Hell hath no fury like a soccer mom scorned!"
This article taken from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/12/31/MNH4151KSU.DTL
Posted Mon, December 22, 2008
Filed under: Public Health Miscellaneous
By MATT CALMAN - The Dominion Post | Saturday, 20 December 2008
A national outbreak of a rare strain of salmonella is believed to have been caused by contaminated flour.
Since mid-October, 53 people have fallen ill to the strain, triggering a recall of a batch of flour made at Champion Flour's
The recall started after samples of flour taken from two of the affected people's homes tested positive for salmonella typhimurium phage type 42.
Health Ministry spokesman Greg Simmons said the probable cause of the poisoning was through eating uncooked flour in children's home-made play dough or raw cake and batter mixes. However, a Food Safety Authority investigation would continue till the source was confirmed.
Champion,
It was unclear how much flour had been recalled. Champion could not be contacted last night.
Authority compliance and investigation director Geoff Allen said it appeared that wheat possibly contaminated by birds had been processed into flour at the
The strain had caused headaches, diarrhea, vomiting, fever and abdominal pain that lasted for a few days. It was less serious than the mbandaka strain that killed 74-year-old Phyllis Priest this year. However, it had affected children and the elderly more severely, Mr Allen said.
"If people have used these brands in their baking ... they can rest assured that the cooking process will have killed the bacteria and that these home-baked foods are safe to eat."
The authority is advising people to wash their hands before and after handling food, to avoid eating raw batter that contains uncooked baking ingredients and to cook food thoroughly.
An authority spokesman said the flour recall was "purely precautionary" and the source of the contamination might not turn out to be the
"There's so many unknowns in this. But it's better to be safe than sorry."
This article taken from: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4798710a11.html?source=email
Posted Mon, December 15, 2008
Filed under: Safe Food Tips
By Jeannine Stein To protect yourself from food of unknown standards and temperatures, be cautious about what you eat at a potluck. If you don't want to sicken fellow guests with your own food -- thereby creating a future phobia, follow these basics in food safety: * After food is prepared, get it into the refrigerator and cool it to 40 degrees or colder. And beware the extra-large pots of stew or soup -- they can sit in the refrigerator all night and never cool to a safe temperature, building up bacteria in the process. Better to break the food down into smaller containers that will chill more quickly.
If possible, ask the host or hostess how long the food has been out, and if it's been recently reheated or cooled to proper temperatures. Dishes that have been sitting out for long periods of time at room temperature can be a breeding ground for harmful bacteria that may cause food poisoning. While nothing is 100% safe -- even salad can be tainted if the ingredients haven't been properly washed -- when in doubt, stick with whole washed fruit or prepackaged foods that don't require refrigeration.
* Wash your hands before preparing food, and wash all cutting boards and utensils after using to avoid cross-contaminating items such as raw meats and vegetables. Better yet, designate several cutting boards for specific foods such as poultry and dairy.
* Make sure food is cooked to proper temperatures. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that beef, veal and lamb steaks, roasts and chops be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 145 degrees. All pork, plus ground beef, veal and lamb should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, and poultry should be cooked to 165 degrees. Hot foods should be reheated to 165 degrees, and can be held on a buffet table at 140 degrees (More information is available on the USDA's website.)
"If you're going to serve food to people, it takes diligence," says Eileen Dykes, technical information specialist with the USDA's meat and poultry hotline. She recommends rotating buffet food every two hours -- and that doesn't mean piling new food on top of old. "If you do that, then the food on the bottom could have been there for four or five hours." That also goes for vegetable and fruit salads, not just meat dishes. Chips, popcorn and wrapped candies are probably safe, but, as she points out, those do not a festive holiday meal make.
The conscientious host or hostess uses a thermometer to make sure foods are at the right temperatures. They may even get lucky and get one as a gift.
"When I went to Thanksgiving dinner this year, I gave the hostess a thermometer," she says. "She said, 'I'm so glad you're here. Can you check the turkey?' It's something we're trying to encourage more people to use."
Start impaling the food with your own thermometer, however, and you're likely not to get invited back next year. Then again, that might be a good thing.
This article taken from: http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-hew-potluckbox15-2008dec15,0,4963608.story
Posted Wed, December 03, 2008
Filed under: