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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Something fishy? Counterfeit foods enter the U.S. market
  • Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:19:45 -0700



Something fishy? Counterfeit foods enter the U.S. market
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Some of your favorite foods may be fakes.

Foods masquerading as something else — a more nutritious something else
— have been big news in the past two years. Chinese food companies in
particular have been blamed for making deadly alterations to dairy, baby
and pet foods by adding melamine. The chemical makes it appear that the
food or beverage has the required level of protein.

But what about food producers in this country? What fraudulent foods do
U.S. consumers have to fear from American companies?

Experts say dangerous U.S.-produced foods are comparatively few, but
producers have been known to practice "economic adulteration" — adding a
little to their bottom line by padding, thinning or substituting something
cheap for something expensive.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration
regulate the food industry, but with safety issues to deal with, economic
adulteration has "really been back-burnered," says Bruce Silverglade of the
non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest. So in a caveat emptor
world, what should consumers look out for?

Seafood

Fish is the most frequently faked food Americans buy. In the business, it's
called "species adulteration" — selling a cheaper fish such as pen-raised
Atlantic salmon as wild Alaska salmon.

When Consumer Reports tested 23 supposedly wild-caught salmon fillets
bought nationwide in 2005-2006, only 10 were wild salmon. The rest were
farmed. In 2004, University of North Carolina scientists found 77% of fish
labeled red snapper was actually something else. Last year, the Chicago
Sun-Times tested fish at 17 sushi restaurants and found that fish being
sold as red snapper actually was mostly tilapia.

"It's really just fraud, plain and simple," says Gavin Gibbons of the
National Fisheries Institute, an industry group.

One thing consumers don't need to worry about is scallops. Tales of skate
wings cut into circles and sold as scallops are common. But Randolph says
the FDA has never found an actual case of it.

Salmon is tricky. Randolph does have one tip, though. Farmed salmon gets
its coloring from dyes added to food pellets the fish are fed, while wild
salmon gets it from the plankton they eat.

"When you cook it, the wild salmon retains its color, and in the
aquaculture salmon, the color tends to leak out," she says. Suspicious
consumers can call the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition hotline
at 1-888-SAFEFOOD.


Olive oil

This luxury oil, touted for its heart-health properties and taste, has
become a gourmet must-have. Americans consumed about 575 million pounds of
the silky stuff last year, according to the North American Olive Oil
Association. Sixty-three percent was the higher-grade extra virgin, which
comes from the first pressing of the olives.

It's also one of the most frequently counterfeited food products, says
Martin Stutsman, the FDA's consumer safety officer for edible oils.

There are no national figures on olive-oil fakery. But after complaints,
Connecticut began testing two years ago. "We were coming across a lot of
products labeled as extra-virgin olive oil that contained up to 90% soybean
oil," says Jerry Farrell Jr., Connecticut's commissioner of consumer
protection.

Most name brands were fine, Farrell says. It was often off-brands sold in
discount stores that were the problem.

Connecticut was so concerned that in November, it became the first state in
the nation to set standards for olive oil, enabling officials there to levy
fines and pull adulterated products off store shelves. California is set to
create its own standards this year. Reports from panels of testers have
found as much as 60% to 70% of the olive oil sold as extra virgin in the
state is a lower-quality olive oil, says Dan Flynn of the Olive Center at
the University of California-Davis.

The easiest thing is for fakers to add 10% vegetable oil in extra virgin,
says Stutsman. "It will still smell as it should, but you've saved 10% of
the cost."

Bob Bauer, president of the North American Olive Oil Association, says it's
more of a problem in restaurants than in supermarkets.


Honey

An expensive natural product that's mostly sugar, honey is easily faked.
"If you can substitute a less expensive source of sugar for the expensive
one, you can save some money and gain market share," says the FDA's
Stutsman.

It used to be that cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup was mostly used
to thin out honey. But chemically, that was easy to spot. FDA used an
isotope test that would easily identify the adulteration.

So counterfeiters got wily and started using beet sugar. Its profile is
similar to honey, so the FDA had to switch to a much more complicated,
multistep test comparing the sugar profiles to see if the proportions and
trace materials match.

"But once we started catching people, they create a moving target. They'll
switch to something more difficult (to detect)," says Stutsman.


Maple syrup

Maple syrup is another high-value item that can be adulterated. In these
tough economic times, Vermont, the USA's largest supplier to flapjacks
everywhere, may up its testing programs.

The boiled-down sap of the sugar maple tree can be diluted with water or
sugar by sellers "trying to get more bang for the buck," says Kristin Haas,
food safety director in the state's Agency for Agriculture, Food and
Markets.

Vermont's testing program has found fraud only three times in the past 17
years, says Haas, but it's not taken lightly. "A couple of years back,
there was a gentleman who actually went to prison because of this issue."

When times get tight, the incentive to cheat can rise like sap in the
spring, so the state may have to work harder to keep its premier product
pure.


Vanilla

A product of the tropics, vanilla pods can be soaked in milk or stored in
sugar to impart a delicate vanilla scent to foods. More commonly, they're
soaked in alcohol that is then used as a flavoring.

But vanillin (pronounced VAN-ah-lynn), a chemical copy of the richly
organic vanilla flavor, was created in the laboratory in the 19th century.
When used in foods, it's supposed to be labeled as an artificial flavor and
usually is.

One "too good to be true" product to watch out for is really inexpensive
vanilla extract sometimes sold in Mexico and Latin America, says the FDA.
It's often made with coumarin, a toxic substance that has been banned in
U.S. foods since 1954.

Coumarin is chemically related to warfarin, a blood thinner, and can be
dangerous. It's "no bargain," the FDA says.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-01-19-fake-foods_N.htm




  • [Livingontheland] Something fishy? Counterfeit foods enter the U.S. market, Tradingpost, 01/22/2009

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