Would You Product Test Your Own Chips and Dips?
One month ago, most of us had never heard of hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP. HVP is a food additive that rarely shows up on labels in those words. It’s more often listed as seasonings or natural flavorings. It fulfills many of the same functions as MSG without forcing companies to put the dreaded word on their labels.
But in the last month, we’ve had cause to learn what HVP is. From potato chips to seasoning mixes to dips, it seems much of our food is suddenly subject to a recall because of possible salmonella contamination of HVP produced by a Las Vegas company, Basic Food Flavors. The full list of recalled foods is over 150 items, but reports indicate that it could reach over 1,000 items before this is over.
Photo by Geo Okretic.
The breakout shows us one thing for certain: our food system is not as safe as it should be. We need to make changes to stop this from happening again. If we’re going to prevent problems like this in the future, we need to figure out what’s happened. Where did the system go wrong?
First, we need to look at how we found out about the problem in the first place. A whistle-blowing customer – in this case, a food processing company – tested the incoming food it had purchased and found salmonella. They reported the problem to the FDA in early February.
Most customers don’t do checks of incoming product. If you buy an ingredient from someone else for use in your product, do you have time to test from each provider? We know that one company made the time, but did other Best Food Flavors customers? Monitoring of the food supply, is already too spread out.
Our next round of protection is the inspection system. Some time after the whistle blower’s report, the FDA inspected the Basic Food Flavors plant on February 12. Improper residues and liquid were discovered throughout the plant. If you have a strong stomach, you can download the report of the FDA’s findings.
What’s most distressing is that Basic Food Flavors KNEW about the contamination. Its certificate of analysis showed positive results for salmonella. The company continued to ship its products with no interruption, for 30 days, even though it already knew that products were potentially contaminated with the microbes.
In the food industry, being busted isn’t enough. The company didn’t let its customers know until February 26, two weeks after the inspection began, and five weeks after the company first found out that there might be a problem! Only in March did the FDA announce recalls!
So the failures happened at every level. The food producer knew about a problem and took no action to fix it. Only after shipping the food out did a customer run a product test and let the FDA know about the problem. And, even after the FDA knew about the problem, it took too long to take corrective action.
We got lucky this time. There have been no reported illness outbreaks. But salmonella can cause serious illness, or even death. That’s why we need to fix the Food and Drug Administration. The Senate will soon be working on legislation that addresses FDA’s food safety programs. Sign up for our alerts (http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/t/5915/signUp.jsp?key=1053), and we’ll let you know more about how you can help make.
Sign up for our alerts, and we’ll let you know more about how you can help make sure that we strengthen and pass this important bill when the Senate takes it up.
-Ron Zucker, Food Researcher