This states it's for India but I have pretty little faith in the US also. I operate a beverage production plant (alcoholic and non) and finally got an actual ingredient and process inspection during our 8th year. We passed with only a few suggested changes but I was asking the inspector (who was a state inspector employed by health and human services inspecting for the fda) what would happen if we failed. They said basically nothing would happen, they would work with us to correct the issue and we had up to a year(if I remember the timeline correctly) to fix it before fines begin. They mentioned an unnamed place in another major city nearby that had rodents running on the food conveyers for multiple inspections yet they keep operating and just pay the fines rather than fix the issue. They mentioned they were close to shutting them down but it had been going on for far longer than a year. This was around early 2019 so pre COVID. I would only expect their inspections are even less frequent now like the rest of the gov agencies we deal with.
that sounds awful, here we have unexpected food controls where you have to have a flyer hanging in a window with you latest review failure to hang it up gives fines and eventually closure if enough violations are made. when unsanitary conditions are found a fine and a bad review until next inspection, it works this way for all food related businesses. this seems to work out for the most part as people walking into your establishment can check your sanitary conditions and choose not to go if it doesnt have a smiley, this keeps most food operators honest.
This is how our area handles restaurant kitchens. When the city health inspector comes for an inspection (supposed to be every quarter) they only inspect our onsite kitchen. They do the normal checklist of food temps, no rodents, food off the ground, etc. This city inspection result is posted publicly as you mentioned. I don't know if they will fine for a low score on this or not. However this inspector does not inspect any of our offsite manufacturing areas, nor where we get our food from (which seems odd) or any form of paperwork besides checking for a food manager permit. All the offsite manufacturing falls under the state inspection as mentioned above, which we have only ever received once.
it works the same way, they also have a review that is public, and are under the same mandatory checkups, i worked in both a restaurant and a potatosalad factory and procedures where the same, you had a checklist for cleaning which was worked out according to state rules, and you wouldnt know when the inspection would happen so same procedure everyday so there wouldnt be any problems if the control came for a visit, it seems to work out ok.
It's almost impossible to detect an adulterant unless you know what adulterant you're looking for.
There are an awful lot of possible adulterants out there too.
Therefore, testing is a bit of a losing game. Instead, developed nations like the US require record keeping (ie. you need to keep a list of suppliers for each batch, and sometimes samples of each batch), and the court system allows someone to sue for a lot of money after the fact if a poisonous adulterant was found.
The risk of being sued is what keeps most food safe.
What exactly are you referring to about suing for a lot of money if an adulterant is found?
Is there a specific law that specifies damages? Because if not, it probably falls into the same civil framework as everything else where the amount of money sought has to be proven as proportional to damages. Unless it severely sickened you, it'd be difficult to quantifiably prove the damage that sawdust caused you.
In the US specifically, it is class actions that make it expensive. If someone accidentally or deliberately puts lead in the flour supply, then that can probably be traced to tens of millions of cakes given to tens of millions of people.
And a good prosecution would be able to prove that while a small amount of lead didn't cause noticeable symptoms to anyone, there is plenty of evidence that across populations lead causes higher criminality, lower IQ, lower earnings, etc. And therefore, as a class, these people have been harmed by an actual dollar amount.
Oh you meant lots of money for the lawyers, not the people whose food was adulterated, because in every class action I've ever seem, the payout amounts per person are never enough to change anyone's life. But the lawyer taking 1/3 of the sum total does well.
The fact that there is a need for these tests to exist make me deeply, deeply sad.
On the other hand, it is a good reminder of the simple things we take for granted. And I, for sure, am very grateful of the luck I have to be living in a part of the world with "strong" consumer protection.
People always tend to complain about regulations, but this is an excellent case in point of why they are needed in the first place.
No, my tea will not have metal shavings. And my milk will not be adulterated with detergents. Or my spices laced with lead for color..
(Not that I am under any illusion that some of the products sold here do not contain chemicals known by manufacturers to be unsafe..)
You are not safe as you think, if you eat stuff coming from exotic places. And at least in Europe we eat tons of stuff coming from all over the world, I can't imagine US is different.
Also, ie in case of turmeric, imagine you eat at restaurant food that you may not even realize has some in the gravy via using a premade spice blend with it, which is using turmeric imported in bulk box from Netherlands, which has been repackaged 'from various sources' if they even bother to mention that.
And how often do you think the test are made? Every box, every batch, every month, every factory/farm etc? 'Strong consumer protection' is rather 'some protection', but there ain't power on Earth currently able to fully protect you even from these basic things. And then as you mention we can go into dodgy but still legal chemicals that will be banned in next decade or two, ie these days literally everything is contaminated by some form of PFAS everywhere. Ignorance is sometimes a true bliss
The problem is unlike developed countries where corporations are involved in these shenanigans, in the case of India it is usually common tradesmen who are involved in adulteration.
Because they operate in an unregulated environment (which is often a matter of pride, “small business” and all that good stuff) it is difficult for the government to step in.
It has less to do with the regulatory environment and more to do with cultures that are accepting of corruption. Government regulators are often part of the corruption in weak cultures.
Do you actually believe that US is not accepting of corruption and is not a weak culture?
For a country that is insanely rich, it’s sad to see poor and middle class being screwed over at every turn of their lives. Pharma , healthcare, crony capitalism, bank crisis , false flag wars … the list goes on.
The reality is that poor countries have to cut corners due to lack of resources and people turn their blind eye because “something is better than nothing”.
A lot of what you buy in first world supermarkets is directly white-labeled from third world countries. I wouldn't bank on the brand on the label having stringent and regular inspection processes, or any at all.
The only thing you can be sure of is that your milk and produce aren't adulterated.
In some (most?) EU countries they do have fairly stringent checks. Of course the quantities coming in from outside the EU are immense, but to protect their market from unfair competition not complying with EU regulation they have strong intensives to have fairly regular inspections.
Not as much concerning on an health side, but you’ll probably find adulterated honey in supermarkets all around the world, especially in processed foods
Unfortunately you can't use the sugar-in-honey tests on this page if the honey is already integrated in processed foods. At least with most processed foods - I might just try these on one of those yogurts where you have separate honey (?) to pour into it. Then again, if it's not "real" honey, they have an obligation to mention that in the ingredients list, so looking at that should be enough...
But yeah, I was also thinking "if people really have to do these tests themselves, something is going seriously wrong".
As I was mentioning in an other reply, it's funny when you know that China exports a lot more honey (1.5x if I remember correctly) than what they produce.
In a documentary they were interviewing a honey fraud specialist from the French authorities, and he was basically explaining that the laboratories they were using in China to counterfeit their honeys were more advanced than the labs they had at their disposal, which themselves were not far from state-of-the art.
Initially they started looking at water content. Then, once the Chinese had adapted, they looked at water and sugar content. When that was not enough, they had to start analyzing the sugar compositions. The next step was to add pollen by weight, then by type. And now they had to analyze the honeys with mass spectrometers which was extremely costly.
At a certain point we should just admit that Chinese bootleggers make better honey than the bees.
After all, it has the correct amount of water and sugar, the correct sugar composition, the correct pollen, and it all has to be cheaper than real bees otherwise they wouldn't bother.
As long as it's called something else, that's fine. This is France we're talking about here though, so food progeny is a thing they take quite seriously.
There’s also the nutritional side. Food makes you happy but it also keeps you healthy and honey is a nutriments bomb. Not sure about the industrial ersatz.
They should definitely test the honey to see if it has the correct micronutrients. That way, the Chinese will have to fortify their fake honey the same way people in other countries fortify staples like milk or flour.
Here in Europe there are some shenanigans with extra virgin olive oil. In the best case, they are adding lower-grade olive oils in the extra virgin oil, or completely mislabeling virgin oil and lampante oil as extra-virgin. In the worst case, especially with oil coming from outside of the EU, they can mix it with other oils, like palm oil.
Honey is also problematic, with China exporting about 1.5 time more honey than what they actually produce..
Sometimes a dutch trader also mislabels Romanian horse meat as beef.
Olive oil consumption in India is rising and numerous reports say that already in the US and Europe up to 60-80% of olive oil is not what it says on the bottle; in other words it's a fraud. Given that olive oil has a proportion of fatty acids in common with vegetable oils, sharp practice detection appears to demand a fully fledged laboratory. Many of us who love olive oil would give a lot for a home test. None of the ones I've seen to date seem to be reliable. I guess it's best to pay over the odds and assume it's not worth the supplier's time and money to adulterate a product already commanding a high price.
This is once again why consumer protection laws are so important; if it's marketed as olive oil but the contents are not olive oil, the product should be removed from shelves.
This is why "Kraft singles" and "Velveeta" isn't called cheese, or "I can't believe it's not butter" and margerine isn't butter, or "Miracle whip" isn't mayonaise.
If it's honest on the packaging though - like over here we have "olive oil blends" for cooking - then it's fine.
Also also, olive oil is a fruit juice, technically, :p.
>>I guess it's best to pay over the odds and assume it's not worth the supplier's time and money to adulterate a product already commanding a high price.
Or it's the opposite - if you can put £1 worth of oil in a bottle selling for £10, you've made a huge amount of profit. On the other hand how much can you really save on a bottle selling for £2? Yeah economies of scale and all that, but at the end of the day it's probably worth targetting the more expensive product(there's a reason why watch fakers make fake Omegas and Rolexes, and not fake casios(although I'm sure those exist too)).
Taste it! Especially if as you say you 'love olive oil', I don't understand - if you can't tell if it's adulterated with a 'flavourless' vegetable oil from taste, then what is it you love about olive over vegetable oil (or what are you worried about missing when it tastes good)? Its higher price, or its lower smoke point?
It's an oil for cooking with the best "health profile". If you need to push the smoke point use light olive oil. I use olive oil for everything and make do with the smoke point. I would like to be able to buy olive oil. The light olive oils have less flavor...
I understood that I just don't think all things are equal and the smoke point was a red herring. I'm sorry it's the kind of HN comment I regret making. I just see pedantry on a detail I feel privileged to contemplate.
No worries, no harm! I cook with it a lot too, but because I like the taste. I'll be able to do so with renewed vigour now that I'm told it's healthier too! (I won't trouble myself with learning the possible nuances or even fact-checking that!)
But I also cook a lot of Indian style food, which doesn't really want or benefit from the flavour, and occasionally deep fry - which does call for a higher smoke point.
I'm pretty sure the taste/flavor/aroma that most people associate with olive oil is actually just rancidity. I also suspect that olive oil suppliers let the oil go rancid on purpose so that it attains that "flavor profile". My personal policy on olive oil is miss me with it - too shady.
I used to think the same and then read about a study that lab tested a bunch of brands. The most expensive ones were more likely to be adulterated. It makes sense in a way. They command the highest margin, ie, highest reward for adulteration.
That said this was in a common US grocery store. It may not apply to really high end artesenal type olive oil generally bought by people who it wouldn't be worth to adulterate.
Also, it's worth noting that there a lot of places along the supply chain where things can be adulterated, and the incentives aren't all the same for every actor along the chain.
Not only is there no drawback, in India iodised salt is mandatory. I'm guessing the language is because common salt lacks processing instead of having something adulterating it and is perfectly safe on its own.
Some fancy salts, like Himalayan rock salt, are not usually available iodised.
If you're adding salt to a fermentation vessel then you wouldn't want it to be iodized since the iodine will harm the bacteria responsible for fermentation.
IIRC you can still buy iodine free salt, you just can’t advertise it as table salt. It has to be explicitly advertised as pickling salt or rock salt or the like. This is the case in many countries, not just India. It is arguably one of the most successful public health initiatives ever.
same was as in the US it is possible to get "ethanol", which is just alcohol that can't be legally consumed. One of my chemistry professors explained that their records keeping for "ethanol" was actually more much more strict than the actual hazardous substances they had in the lab.
That must have been exaggeration to ward off clever ideas unless it's in like Utah or something -- At my grad school in a fairly puritanical state, USP grade ethanol was just on the shelf in the supply room with no more security or record keeping than on bags of pipet tips. And yes, some people did learn that undiluted pure EtOH dehydrates mucous membranes most painfully
In Alabama you can only legally get alcohol from a state designated entity. This was at a state university, so they had a state license just like a store would. Along with that came all the regulations.
My chemistry professors told us that if someone tried to drink the ethanol in the lab their throat would seal off and they would start to choke because it will suck the moisture out of your tissue due to it being nearly anhydrous.
Skimmed milk is not watered-down milk though; skimmed milk is centrifuged to spin the fat out, but they don't add water; skimmed milk is naturally emulsified, adding water means it's no longer as emulsified, hence the test.
