Food fraud in America
荆楚理工学院-四年级下学期班主任工作计划
Food fraud in America: What are you really
eating?
Rhode Island Rep. Joseph McNamara
is currently trying to pass legislation
that
would make fried squid the official state
appetizer. Since Rhode Island is
the squid
capital of the world – hey, they have to be good
at something –
chances are the fried rings
served there are exactly what they claim to be.
Elsewhere, however, they may be serving you
deep fried pig anus and calling it
calamari.
In January, National Public Radio told a story
about a multi-state pork
processing company
selling pig rectum – referred to, by the industry,
as “bung”
– as imitation calamari. NPR‟s Ira
Glass did everything possible to refute his
source on the story, but dozens of experts
could not shoot down the possibility
that
people are ordering squid and getting pork bung
instead. He went so far as
to have his sister,
a chef, serve a plate of fried bung next to a
plate of fried
calamari.
No one could tell
the difference.
That‟s just one of many recent
stories of food fraud that has Americans
thinking twice about what‟s actually on their
plate. Diners are now wary of
imposters
passing themselves off as everything from halibut
to honey.
A recent study by Oceana found the
act of seafood fraud has been uncovered
both
in the United States and abroad at levels ranging
from 25 to more than 70
percent for commonly
swapped species such as red snapper, wild salmon
and
Atlantic cod. Oceana collected more than
1,200 seafood samples from 674 retail
outlets
in 21 states to determine if they were honestly
labeled. DNA testing
found that one-third (33
percent) of the 1,215 samples analyzed nationwide
were mislabeled, according to U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA)
guidelines.
Samples sold as snapper and tuna had the
highest mislabeling rates (87 and
59 percent,
respectively), with the majority of the samples
identified by DNA
analysis as something other
than what was found on the label. Only seven of
the
120 samples of red snapper purchased
nationwide were actually red snapper.
The
other 113 samples were another fish. Halibut,
grouper, cod and Chilean sea
bass were also
mislabeled between 19 and 38 percent of the time,
while salmon
was mislabeled 7 percent of the
time.
If you think you can tell – or that
you‟re safe when visiting a reputable
sushi or
seafood joint – think again.
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Oceana found that 44 percent of all the
retail outlets visited sold
mislabeled fish.
Restaurants, grocery stores and sushi venues all
sold
mislabeled fish and chances of being
swindled varied greatly depending on
where the
seafood was purchased.
“Our study identified
strong national trends in seafood mislabeling
levels
among retail types, with sushi venues
ranking the highest (74 percent), followed
by
restaurants (38 percent) and then grocery stores
(18 percent). These same
trends among retail
outlets were generally observed at the regional
level,”
Oceana said in their summary report.
So what of the mantra “what you don‟t know
won‟t hurt you?” Well, aside
from this
practice being illegal and dishonest, it can
actually thwart the good
intentions of
Americans looking to improve their health.
“As
our results demonstrate, a high level of
mislabeling nationwide
indicates that seafood
fraud harms not only the consumer‟s pocket book,
but
also every honest vendor or fisherman
along the supply chain. These fraudulent
practices also carry potentially serious
concerns for the health of consumers,
and for
the health of our oceans and vulnerable fish
populations.”
While it‟s despicable, it‟s also
easy to see how and why unscrupulous
people
would mislabel a cheap fish for an expensive one.
But what about honey? Or extra virgin olive
oil?
These are products most of us believe we
could spot as fraud. However,
most of the
honey sold in American chain stores does not meet
international
quality standards.
Testing
done for Food Safety News found that most store
honey isn‟t
honey, with ultra-filtering
techniques removing pollen and hiding the honey‟s
origins.
“More than three-fourths of the
honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn‟t
exactly what the bees produce. The results
show that the pollen frequently has
been
filtered out of products labeled „honey,‟” wrote
Food Safety News.
That means these products
won‟t pass the quality standards set by most of
the world‟s food safety agencies. Without
pollen, there is no way of knowing
whether the
honey came from legitimate and safe sources. The
study found that
76 percent of samples bought
at grocery stores had all the pollen removed; 100
percent of honey sampled from drugstores had
no pollen; and 77 percent of the
honey sampled
from big box stores had the pollen filtered out.
Fear not, foodies. The study found that all of
the samples found at farmers
markets, co-ops
and whole food stores such as Trader Joe‟s were
the real deal.
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But if you
can‟t taste the difference – and you probably
can‟t – why should you
care if the pollen has
been removed?
“Raw honey is thought to have
many medicinal properties,” Kathy Egan,
dietitian at College of the Holy Cross in
Mass., told Food Safety News.
“Stomach
ailments, anemia and allergies are just a few of
the conditions that
may be improved by
consumption of unprocessed honey.”
Recently, a
new study on food fraud was done by U.S.
Pharmacopeial
Convention (USP), a scientific
nonprofit organization that helps set standards
for the “quality, safety and benefit” of foods
and medicines. You can find their
searchable
online database of food fraud reports at .
Their research found that olive oil, milk,
saffron and coffee joined honey
and fish as
the most commonly fraudulent products on the
market. Most of the
reported food fraud comes
from producers adding fillers or diluting the real
deal
with less expensive ingredients. Clouding
agents were found in 877 food
products from
315 different companies. Vegetable oil was
discovered in bottles
of olive oil. Grape
juice was passed for pomegranate juice. Given that
even the
best palates can be fooled by food
tech trickery, it‟s difficult to completely
avoid being duped.
There are some tips,
however, to get what you pay for.
1. Buy the
good stuff.
Squeeze your own limes instead of
buying a bottle of lime juice. Grind
your own
spices and brew loose tea instead of packets.
2. Shop smart
Whole food items are a safer
bet. They cost more, so it‟s up to you to
decide if that‟s a deal breaker. But think
about this: Most of the fraudulent food
listed
in this article do not feature healing benefits.
If you‟re buying a fake,
you‟re saving cash
but hurting your body. Join a co-op, a CSA or shop
carefully
at your local whole food grocery
store.
3. Forget about white tuna
As
mentioned above, escolar is typically passed off
as white tuna. Escolar
is edible, but it
contains gempylotoxin, a substance humans can‟t
digest. You
know how the rest of that story
goes.
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