Lead-contaminated applesauce pouches expose issues with food safety oversight

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Lead-contaminated applesauce pouches expose issues with food safety oversight

The effects of an Oct. 2023 recall of applesauce pouches with high concentrations of lead are widening, raising questions about how food reaches store shelves, who watches over it and how far that oversight extends. Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder and editor of Food Fix, a publication that...

www.pbs.org

Video at link.

Lead found in blood levels of children in US linked to these apple sauce pouches, sold in stores that poor people frequent, like Dollar Tree...

That's interesting on a number of levels.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That Pb levels could be detected in children is very discerning and indicative that the issue was not caught. Last Week Tonight covered food safety a while ago, or a lack there of. The food industry appears disregarded by regulators and the food industry itself.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Not sure exactly how to frame this incident. From a political standpoint is it because there is so much anti-government sentiment that we can blame this on right-wing republicans? Right wingers are always playing the victim card saying we need to do away with all the regulations. Can there be too much oversight and regulation when it is the food supply? Not saying this happened because of the present political climate, but the present political climate among right wingers is anti regulatory. Do they want to have their lead and eat it too?

 

[Elixir]

Not saying this happened because of the present political climate

Okay then, I’ll say it. Conditions that allow this kind of thing are permitted and even encouraged by the GQP.

 

[robnisch]

This makes the SCOTUS case about the Chevron doctrine even more important.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Underfunded federal agencies, disregarded or appealed, appealed, appealed regulations is par for the course.The extra helping we get when the Repubs are in charge is agency leadership that use a variety of tactics to strong-arm their inspectors to pencil-whip their reports. Tactics like idling inspectors travel time intermittently so they do not see as much per diem.

***

While I know some people have no choice but to shop at these low cost stores, there are many who can afford to feed themselves and their family better and choose not to. It's like a point of pride to squeeze every last nickel out of the food budget. Of all things to look to save money on, this has always been low on the list for me.

 

[TV and credit cards]

This makes the SCOTUS case about the Chevron doctrine even more important.

I was reading that link. If SCOTUS did a 180 on this doctrine, it would so gum up the courts as to effectively stop regulation.

 

[thebeave]

Well, I'll be taking porkchops and appleshaush off the menu for the forseeable future.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Sidebar: Does Sammy Alito eat applesauce?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sidebar: Does Sammy Alito eat applesauce?

His politics imply it is possible.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This makes the SCOTUS case about the Chevron doctrine even more important.

I was reading that link. If SCOTUS did a 180 on this doctrine, it would so gum up the courts as to effectively stop regulation.

Indeed. It would make it impossible to regulate anything, without the explicit call from Congress... who consist of a bunch of law staffers working generally for lawyers, who know jack about any of the number of things being regulated in this country. The GOP has been trying to kill this for a long time, and we are one hyper-technical ruling away from SCOTUS fucking this up. The current set up works, but what works isn't as important as making more money at the cost of consumers, citizens, nation.

 

[robnisch]

Funny part is it is about herring, not red I hope.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

Those are not mutually exclusive, though. Deliberate adulteration of the product comes from the manufacturer of the cinnamon that may have added lead chromate to increase the weight when selling. FDA has a lot of oversight of the manufacturing processes of foods in the US and ought to also have oversight of the process of receiving foods from other countries. It sounds like a tricky situation when we receive a manufactured product from country A that itself received an ingredient from country B prior to its own manufacturing process. At a high level this feels like some practices from other industries, like that all the commercial entities that company A deals with need to be XXX-compliant and the goods need to be YYY certified or they cannot be received by company ZZZ in the US. Certainly, this all needs to be traceable and so there should be ZERO questions right now as to who produced the cinnamon. If we have a system in place where children are eating things bought from grocery stores where ingredients are made in untraceably unknown parts of the world with possible toxic poisons, something is amiss in the regulatory framework, oversight, or its implementation.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

What, we aren't supposed to be able to detect it if it is deliberate?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

What, we aren't supposed to be able to detect it if it is deliberate?

The point is it would enter the chain after some inspection had already been done. The precautions against someone adding material are very different than the precautions against inadvertent entry.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

What, we aren't supposed to be able to detect it if it is deliberate?

The point is it would enter the chain after some inspection had already been done. The precautions against someone adding material are very different than the precautions against inadvertent entry.

I don't know how the regs are written or what they say. Are you saying there is a difference in how they test? There shouldn't be any difference.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

What, we aren't supposed to be able to detect it if it is deliberate?

The point is it would enter the chain after some inspection had already been done. The precautions against someone adding material are very different than the precautions against inadvertent entry.

There should be some level of testing for store shelf products.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think this really is a regulatory oversight--they think it's deliberate contamination.

What, we aren't supposed to be able to detect it if it is deliberate?

The point is it would enter the chain after some inspection had already been done. The precautions against someone adding material are very different than the precautions against inadvertent entry.

I don't know how the regs are written or what they say. Are you saying there is a difference in how they test? There shouldn't be any difference.

If it's deliberate it happened at some point after ingredients are tested. A manufacturer will want to test input as early in the process as possible so they don't end up combining bad inputs with good inputs.