Recall Roundup: November 21, 2010

Here is today's list of food safety recalls, product withdrawals, allergy alerts and miscellaneous compliance issues. The live links will take you directly to the official recall notices and company news releases that contain detailed information for each recall and alert.

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United States

• Allergy Alert: Krunchers! Inc. recalls 18 cases of Jays Original Potato Chips (12-ounce bags; Date code JAN16CA542011) due to the presence of undeclared milk.

Canada

• Food Safety Recall: Charcuterie La Tour Eiffel recalls sliced and shaved La Belle Bretagne Cooked Garlic Roasted Pork and Tour Eiffel Roasted Pork Old Style (175g packages; Best Before Nov 18, Dec 2 and in variable weight with best before date of Dec 25 and 31). The recalled meats were also sold at deli counters as shaved or sliced La Belle Bretagne Cooked Garlic Roasted Pork with a Best Before date of December 14, 26, January 3 or 9, and Tour Eiffel Roasted Pork Old Style with a Best Before date of December 31. The recall was initiated because the products were insufficiently cooked, and present a health hazard.

Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands

• Food Safety Recall (Korea): Korea's Food and Drug Administration announces that private label brand "wayijeulrek kongsatang" is recalled due to contamination with metallic particles. The recalled products were sold in Lotte Shopping and Lotte Mart.

Some supermarket chains post recall notices on their web sites for the convenience of customers. To see whether a recalled food was carried by your favorite supermarket, follow the live link to the supermarket's recall web site.

• A&P
• Big Y® World Class Market®
  
• BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc.
  
• Bloom
  
• Brookshire's
  
• Costco Wholesale Corporation (US stores)
  
• Costco Wholesale Canada Ltd.
  
• EDEKA (Germany)
• Food City
  
• Food Lion
  
• Giant Food LLC
• Gros Cidac (Italy)
• Hannaford Brothers Co.
  
• Harris Teeter
• H-E-B
• The Kroger Company*
  
• Price Chopper
  
• Raley's
• Roundy's Supermarkets, Inc.
  
• Sainsbury's
  
• ShopRite
  
• Stop & Shop
• Sweetbay Supermarkets
• Target
  
• Top Food & Drug
• Tops Friendly Markets
  
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
  
• Wegmans
  
• Whole Foods Market
  
• WinCo Foods
• Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.
  

*The Kroger umbrella encompasses numerous supermarket, marketplace and convenience store chains, listed on the Kroger corporate home page.

Recall Roundup: October 16, 2009

Here is today's list of food safety recalls, product withdrawals and allergy alerts. The live links will take you directly to the official recall notices and company news releases that contain detailed information for each recall and alert.

United States

• Food Safety Recall: J.F. O'Neill Packing Company (Omaha, NE) recalls approximately 33,000 pounds of beef tongues that may not have had the tonsils completely removed. Tonsils may carry prions that transmit mad cow disease.

Canada

• Food Safety Recall: Boucherie Chez Manon (1396 boul. Saguenay est, Saguenay, QC) recalls several low-acid prepared foods packaged in hermetically sealed containers because the product labels do not indicate "Garder réfrigéré" and the products were not displayed or stored at refrigeration temperature.

Europe

• Allergy Alert (EU #2009.1357): Undeclared egg albumin in Alaska pollock fillets from Germany; distributed in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Spain and Sweden
• Food Safety Recall (EU #2009.1350): Histamine in frozen tuna loins from India; distributed in Ireland
• Food Safety Recall (EU #2009.1361): Norovirus (isolated from affected persons) in frozen raspberries from Serbia; distributed in Sweden
• Food Safety Recall (EU#2009.1362): Organic sun dried tomatos from Italy infested with moulds; distributed in Denmark

Australia & New Zealand

• Allergy Alert (New Zealand): Sealord Group Limited recalls a selected batch of the 200gm Sealord Deli Menu Italian Pasta & Tuna product due to a labeling error. The recalled item contains undeclared peanuts.
• Pharmaceutical Product Recall (Australia): Biotech Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd recalls GOLD CROSS Codeine Linctus APF. The 100mL bottles, containing 25mg codeine phosphate per 5mL, are not equipped with child-resistant closures. The recalled bottles carry the following identification: Batches 2533, 16074, 16073, 25568, 16076; AUST R 27219; Barcode/EAN 9314949260137; ARTG number 27219.

Asia, Africa & The Pacific

• Slimming Product Alert (Taiwan): The Taiwan Department of Health warns consumers that Lang No.1 and Jinqiangbudao have been found by Japan to contain Sildenafil, a drug that can cause serious side effects. These products are not approved for sale in Taiwan and should not be used.

Some supermarket chains post recall notices on their web sites for the convenience of customers. To see whether a recalled food was carried by your favorite supermarket, follow the live link to the supermarket's recall web site.

• A&P
• Big Y® World Class Market®
  
• BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc.
  
• Bloom
  
• Brookshire's
  
• Costco Wholesale Corporation (US stores)
  
• Costco Wholesale Canada Ltd.
  
• EDEKA (Germany)
• Food City
  
• Food Lion
  
• Giant Food LLC
• Hannaford Brothers Co.
  
• Harris Teeter
  
• Harvey's Supermarket
  
• H-E-B
• The Kroger Company*
  
• Price Chopper
  
• Roundy's Supermarkets, Inc.
  
• Sainsbury's
  
• ShopRite
  
• Stop & Shop
• Sweetbay Supermarkets
• Target
  
• Tops Friendly Markets
  
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
  
• Wegmans
  
• Whole Foods Market
  
• Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.
  

*The Kroger umbrella encompasses numerous supermarket, marketplace and convenience store chains, listed on the Kroger corporate home page.

If you would like to receive automatic email alerts for all new articles posted on eFoodAlert, please submit your request using the link on our sidebar.

I Beg To Differ!

In the last few days, food safety bloggers Bill Marler and Amy Derby have suggested that meat from the 143 million pound Hallmark/Westland "downer cow" recall should be tested. In my opinion, the only ones who would benefit from that idea would be the testing labs.

Marler suggests that the meat could be tested for mad cow, Salmonella and E. coli. Screening for mad cow prions is most effective when carried out on brain or nerve tissue, where the prions are most heavily concentrated. It would be far easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find a random few mad cow prions in 143 million pounds of meat. And a "negative" result for Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7 would be equally meaningless.

As Marler pointed out, there is an ethical dilemma here. Is it appropriate to discard meat that is likely safe to eat because some unknown fraction of it came from "downer" cows? I don't know the answer to that question. But I am certain of one thing. The answer won't come from testing.

Headline News

It’s interesting how a headline can lead someone astray. A headline in Saturday’s “Japan News Review” announced, “Dutch milk suspected behind Japanese mad cow outbreaks.”

Not waiting to read the article, I immediately dove into the scientific literature to see what I had missed. Was it really possible for mad cow to be transmitted through milk? I couldn’t find a single research article to support this theory.

When I went back and read the original article, I discovered that the cattle hadn’t been fed milk, but rather a milk substitute that contained powdered animal fat. That didn’t make a lot more sense. Tallow (a rendered animal fat) has long been considered a low risk animal by-product by the World Health Organization.

The theory that Japanese cattle were infected with mad cow prions by being fed milk substitute containing Dutch animal fat is an old one. A very similar story appeared on CNN in 2001.

There are other possible explanations for the Japanese mad cow outbreak. The milk substitute was actually processed in Japan, using animal fat from the Netherlands as one ingredient. The powder might have been contaminated by meat and bone meal - a high-risk material for mad cow transmission - during mixing. Another source might have been dried cattle blood, which is sometimes used as an ingredient in mild substitute for feeding cattle.

There’s only one thing I’m sure of. Dutch milk did NOT transmit mad cow disease, in Japan or anywhere else.

FDA - An Agency in Crisis

One year ago, the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration directed the agency's Science Board to review whether the FDA had the necessary personnel, science expertise, equipment and budget to carry out its various mandates effectively. The results of that review have just been made public.

The findings reported by the Science Board are shocking, but not surprising to anyone who has followed the deteriorating state of our food safety systems these last several years. Among its series of observations, the Board had this to say about the current state of the FDA (and these are direct quotes):

• The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.
• The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability.
• The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its information technology (IT) infrastructure is inadequate.
• FDA does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation.
  

Peter Barton Hutt, a former FDA Commissioner and a contributor to this report, observes that the FDA has been underfunded for decades, and faults both Democratic and Republican administrations for piling additional unfunded mandates onto the agencies plate. In Hutt's opinion, the FDA needs a doubling of its current budget and a 50% increase in manpower to begin to address its deficiencies.

The budget shortfalls and resultant lack of equipment, resources and personnel to carry out FDA's responsibilities have also seriously damaged the morale of agency personnel. This, in turn, has accelerated the loss of trained scientists and administrators - many of whom are difficult to replace.

While all parts of the agency are hurting, the two most seriously affected appear to be the Center for Food Safety and Nutrition (CFSAN), and the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM). The Board observes in its report that a simple lack of resources prevented the FDA from timely introduction and enforcement of new animal feed regulations to prevent the spread of mad cow disease in the United States. And even in the face of the recent pet food recalls, the CVM can only afford to have two people working on pet food issues.

The Food and Drug Administration once was one of the most respected agencies of the US government. In the 1970s, approximately 80% of Americans surveyed expressed confidence in the agency. That level of confidence has deteriorated (to 36% in 2006) along with the capabilities of the FDA to manage all of the statues that fall into its areas of responsibility.

Finally, the Science Board observes that "(r)ecommendations of excellent FDA reviews are seldom followed," and that failure to act on past recommendations "...has jeopardized the public's health." Let's hope that, this time, someone is listening.

Mad Cows and Wasted Deer

I was asked the other day about CWD in wild deer and the risks of giving (presumably raw) deer bones to dogs. I’ve done some digging, and here’s what I’ve dug up.

CWD stands for Chronic Wasting Disease. It’s part of a family of diseases known as “Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies” or TSE. Other members of this family include Mad Cow Disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (“CJD”) in humans. While all of these diseases are related, they are not identical. But they all have similar effects on their victim’s nervous systems, causing a slow, progressive deterioration and eventual death.

These diseases are associated with an abnormal form of a particular protein, known as a prion, which is found in the brain and nervous tissues of affected animals. In the case of CWD, abnormal prions have also been found in the muscle tissue and saliva of deer.

TSEs usually are associated with particular host species. For example, scrapie is limited mostly to sheep, CJD is a human disease, and CWD is found in deer, elk and other related species. But, under the certain conditions, the disease can jump to other species.

The most nimble species-jumper is Mad Cow Disease, which has caused disease in other bovines (such as oxen), humans (variant CJD), and cats (both wild and domestic). CWD appears to stick much closer to its home species. It has been transmitted to cattle, goats and sheep in the lab, but does not jump easily into these other animals under natural conditions.

Dogs do not appear to be susceptible to any of these TSEs - at least not yet. So, if you give your dog a deer bone, he or she will probably be safe - at least from CWD. In fact, you are almost certainly at greater risk of falling victim to the CWD prion than your dog.

Please keep in mind, though, that CWD is the least of your worries. Wild game carries a full complement of bacteria, protozoa and parasitic worms. You might want to think twice before exposing your family pet to these risks - but that’s another topic.