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Applesauce pouches may have been contaminated on purpose, FDA foods chief says
- throwup238 3y agotldr: > The FDA says it currently believes the adulteration is “economically motivated.” That generally refers to ingredients being altered in order to make products appear higher in value, often so companies can produce a cheaper item and sell it at an elevated price. From the title it sounded like there was a supervillain poisoning children for the funsies.
- iambateman 3y agotrying to squeeze an extra $0.01/pouch of profit by poisoning children is supervillain enough for me.
- throwup238 3y agoI'm using the official definition negotiated by the Office of Secret Intelligence and Guild of Calamitous Intent at the first Treaty of Tolerance Summit and I don't think this quite qualifies. This is just regular ol' villainy of the invisible hand.
- iambateman 3y ago[flagged]
- phone8675309 3y agoI tip my fedora to you, kind stranger, and I have applied your updoots to the left!
- the_gastropod 3y agoPurposely poisoning children vs simply being indifferent about poising children through your actions aren't that different, in my opinion.
- bonton89 3y agoArguably worse. If the incentive structure is setup such that (vicious psychopathic) people choose to make this kind of tradeoff, this will just keep happening since the culprit will just be replaced by another link in the same chain with the same motivations. A killer doing it for fun wouldn't have his incentives aligned with the company and wouldn't have all their resources available to hide and facilitate it continuing. Potential killers also know that they wouldn't be able to get away with it for long and would be viciously punished, whereas company leadership know they will be able diffuse responsibility and be minimally punished, if at all.
- Larrikin 3y agoPoisoning kids for money is worse than poisoning kids for fun.
- jqpabc123 3y agoNo --- more like a cinnamon supplier attempting to make his product heavier. When purchased by weight, adding lead equates to more money because the product is heavier. This is not new. Paprika has been found to be intentionally contaminated with lead oxide which is red in color. Ground turmeric has been found to be intentionally contaminated with lead chromate which is yellow in color.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> Ground turmeric has been found to be intentionally contaminated with lead chromate which is yellow in color. In that case, the idea isn't that the lead chromate is yellow so that it can increase the weight of the spice while being safely camouflaged. The idea is that it is visually distinct and consumers prefer the brighter yellow of turmeric-with-lead to the duller yellow of non-poisonous turmeric.
- jqpabc123 3y agoIf color was all they wanted, they could have used food coloring at lower cost They chose lead chromate because it is yellow and it increases the weight.
- daveguy 3y agoThat is not a fair assessment of the supervillain-ness of this contamination. They weren't just trying to bulk up the products with inert ingredients. Their "bulk up" (to increase profit) resulted in as much a 500x the limit of lead contamination. Very much supervillain poisoning kids for profit.
- lupusreal 3y agoMost supervillains have a profit motive. Selling poisoned food to kids to make a few more dollars could easily be part of a Bond villain plot. Anyway, the executives involved deserve the death penalty (see: 2008 Chinese milk scandal)
- jqpabc123 3y agoEqually concerning should be the fact that a majority of pharmaceuticals are being produced in countries with lax regulatory controls. And the regulatory controls elsewhere leave much to be desired. It took the FDA years to figure out that widely used blood pressure medications were being contaminated with a carcinogen. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-updates-and-press-announcements-angiotensin-ii-receptor-blocker-arb-recalls-valsartan-losartan https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-u...
- consumer451 3y agoFrom a few years back, I recall that an Israeli company was going to give us affordable consumer chemical scanners. Anyone remember what happened to that company and technology?
- jqpabc123 3y agoThis might work to detect certain base elements like lead. But I doubt this will work reliably with pharmaceuticals. These are complex chemicals. A slight variation in composition can be the difference between medicine and carcinogen. To reliably automate testing for every possible variation would be virtually impossible without producing so many false positives as to be essentially useless.
- consumer451 3y agoI just found the company that I was thinking of, they still exist but only in b2b, but only in a very specific niche. They have scaled way back from their original ambition. They seem to have had consumer tech already,[0] and rolled it back for reasons which I do not understand. > Our patented solution combines two integrated technological components, the revolutionary SCiO Sensor, and our powerful cloud. Together these disruptive technologies provide a comprehensive end to end solution that gives you everything your business needs for instant material analysis.[1] A consumer product no longer exists, even though one was originally delivered. This could be an issue of going up-market first, scaling issues, or if I believed in conspiracies like "killer acquisitions,"[2] then I might imagine that this technology would be inconvenient for many industries if end consumers had the spectrographic data in hand. This inconvenience might be a bunch of people complaining about compounds which were not dangerous, or it might democratize the testing that the FDA should be doing, and show dangerous contamination in many consumer products, especially in the food category. [0] https://theindexproject.org/post/scio https://theindexproject.org/post/scio [1] https://www.consumerphysics.com/ https://www.consumerphysics.com/ [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22killer+acquisition%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22killer+acquisition%22 https://www.timesofisrael.com/scanner-identifyng-foods-calorie-ingredient-count-honored-by-world-body/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/scanner-identifyng-foods-calor...
- odyssey7 3y agoThis reminds me of the recent discussion about adulterated turmeric. The Economist, how to stop turmeric from killing people: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/02/how-to-stop-turmeric-from-killing-people https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/02/how-to-stop-tur... Hacker News post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139011 The FDA deputy commissioner’s statement on the adulterated cinnamon is very interesting. “My instinct is they didn’t think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,” Jones said. “They thought it was going to end up in places that did not have the ability to detect something like this.” In fact, the regulatory process failed to prevent the lead poisoning of the children involved. The goalposts the statement erects are to stop a poisoning that’s underway once children already have high levels of lead in their blood, rather than to prevent lead poisoning to begin with. And it suggests that the supply chain issue was a mixup that was only possible due to the failure of other countries to reject lead-laced cinnamon, seemingly an attempt to scapegoat other countries for the agency’s failure at preventing the poisoning of children within the United States.
- iambateman 3y agoSome small group of food executives woke up this morning knowing that they have very publicly run up against the US justice system and I hope they (1) are scared out of their minds, (2) get severely punished and (3) never serve food to another soul because if true, this is evil.
- dylan604 3y agowhat dream world are you in? i doubt there are many executives of any type that are concerned. they'll just have someone write a check, and all will be forgiven/forgotten.
- fhdkweig 3y agoStill, it happens sometimes. It's how my hometown became world famous. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=peanut+corporation+of+america+blakely+ga+poison https://duckduckgo.com/?q=peanut+corporation+of+america+blak... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/22/peanut-corp-owner-sorry-salmonella-outbreak https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/22/peanut-corp-...
- navmed 3y agoIs it so hard to check for heavy metals and common toxins on random batches of ingredients? I'd think this should be a standard practice to follow in food manufacturing. Aren't components and materials tested in mechanical and civil engineering?
- julian37 3y agoI don't how hard it is, but part of the problem is the FDA's chronic understaffing issues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/10/baby-formula-fda-break-up/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/10/baby-form... https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3944507&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3944507&page=1 (2007) Related: https://undark.org/2023/02/01/for-a-host-of-vital-lab-tests-no-fda-oversight-exists/ https://undark.org/2023/02/01/for-a-host-of-vital-lab-tests-...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoRight. It's not hard in practice, just requires paying more money to grow the government and many people are against that.
- jszymborski 3y agoI can't imagine many reasons to just add lead into childrens food. Lead acetate has a slightly sweet taste but surely there are more effective ways to sweeten things on the cheap... ethylene glycol comes to mind. Unless they just wanted to bulk up the weight EDIT: Indeed ethylene glycol has been the culprit in the poisoning of children who consumed cough syrup in Indonesia https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/22/indonesia-says-child-deaths-from-acute-kidney-injury-rise-to-133 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/22/indonesia-says-chi...
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoUsing lead to increase mass by any significant amount would require a substantial fraction of the food to be lead acetate, which has a density well under 4g/cm³. Even red lead is "only" 8.3g/mm³, so it's not like you can get a noticeable bump in mass before your product is way up there in ppm. 10000pm (pretty enormous!) would increase the mass by only about 70 grams per litre.
- hollerith 3y agoThe lead was used to increase the mass of cinnamon, then the cinnamon was sold by the wrongdoer, then added to the applesauce.
- wintogreen74 3y agoany chemists here who could calc if this is cost effective?
- hollerith 3y agolead is a dollar a pound. the cheapest cinnamon powder I can find is 7 dollars a pound.
- gruez 3y agoThe amount of ill-gotten gains from adulterating/bulking up your product is directly proportional to its value by mass. An applesauce pouch weighs like 100g and costs $1 each, so you'd expect to get $10 per kg of lead added. Meanwhile cinnamon costs $30/kg, so it's roughly 3x as profitable. Of course, this assumes the lead is free, which isn't the case, but that actually makes adulterating cinnamon even more profitable by comparison. For instance if lead costs $5/kg, then you'd make $5/kg of profit on the applesauce vs $25/kg on the cinnamon, making it 5x as profitable.
- evanwise 3y agoI would hope this results in criminal charges and jail time. Honestly, even if it's by negligence and not deliberate. Fines are not enough to abate this kind of despicable behavior.
- infamouscow 3y agoI would go further and say this is ideal for capital punishment. Not because I think capital punishment deters such reprehensible behavior, but because it's ridiculous tax payers shelter and feed animals willing to do such horrible things. Those tax dollars are better spent on virtually anything else.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI think that has happened, a few times, in China. They can get pretty harsh, when it comes to punishments. Corruption (at least, the ones that get caught, or embarrass the Party) is also sometimes met with capital punishment. Corruption is a huge problem, worldwide. We have plenty of it, in the US, but other nations almost have it in their constitution. Everyone just expects a little silver to cross their palms. I had family that was very big on fighting corruption.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoTwo executives were executed in the followup to the Chinese scandal when baby formula was found to be intentionally adulterated with melamine. (A few hundred babies were hospitalized; six died.) It seems safe to say that there is a deterrent effect.
- potatopatch 3y agoThe regulators seem a bit condescending about other countries. Given everything I've heard about US import and food controls the manufacturer may have intentionally chosen the US since they could not anticipate losing the lottery and being properly tested.
- alephnerd 3y ago> manufacturer may have intentionally chosen the US since they could not anticipate losing the lottery and being properly tested In an EU vs US showdown, a manufacturer will sell the "inferior" product to US, but US and EU product safety regulations are miles beyond other large markets (China, India, Brazil, Russia, ASEAN, etc). Manufacturers will absolutely create different SKUs of the exact same brand for different export markets. Try out P&G products in Thailand versus the US for example. Or the Indian Cough Syrup scandal where Indian companies exported cough syrups that wouldn't pass Indian regulatory muster to Africa, Central Asia, and poorer parts of India
- potatopatch 3y agoAny level of random sampling is a serious concern for a conglomerate like P&G with both many products and high volume. Negasmart may be able to sell for years at a substantial volume for them, at a considerably higher price compared to BRICS, before their first finding. I would like to see evidence from the FDA that they aren't just lucky on this one detection, (if it even was detected by them before doctors/parents reports.)
- Turing_Machine 3y agoIt happens far more often than you'd think, and it rarely makes the news. We're talking hundreds of times every month. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/ImportRefusals/index.cfm https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/ImportRefusals/index.... Not all of these are refused for being dangerous, of course. Some just have inaccurate labels or suchlike. But still hundreds of times each and every month.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoThis is going to trace back to China - watch. This reeks of the Melamine scandal.
- jakedata 3y agoConsider the irony of a company named "Negasmart" intentionally adding lead to an ingredient used in children's food.
- bluSCALE4 3y agoLooks to me that these were tested as a reaction to reports of kids being poisoned. It’d be nice if we tested batches BEFORE they got on shelves.
- emmet 3y agoTerrifying to think how many times this has happened with ingredients that we haven't caught. Fraudulent health certificates can't really be identified unless a spot test is done somewhere further down the chain, and why would you bother with that if you've got a perfectly good health certificate from the supplier?
- dylan604 3y agoThere's always the trust but verify concept, but nobody goes through the expensive of certifying the raw ingredients. It sounds like they don't even certify the product they produce. Seems to me that one item per batch would be a decent idea, but "you're cutting into my margins"!!
- ramses0 3y ago...and yet we worry about `npm` supply chain attacks...
- gregwebs 3y agoIt's important to understand that intention is not required. Spice processing machinery is often made out of metal with lead. For example brass, whichcan have higher lead concentration on the outside to make it easier to machine into its final form or more uniform to make the metal less brittle. It's possible that their machinery got degraded or even that it was re-coated with a lead based paint. There are cases where lead has been used as a food coloring ingredient for curcumin and it's also possible something like that could have happened. The intention is not specifically to add lead, but the fact that lead is being added for some other purpose is being ignored. There's a lot of minor lead contamination going on with these kinds of mechanisms. What happened in this case is that for some unknown reason the lead contamination was major rather than minor.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> What happened in this case is that for some unknown reason the lead contamination was major rather than minor. Lead salts taste sweet. I'm with the FDA; I doubt this is inadvertent contamination from machinery. This looks to me like deliberate adulteration. Also: those sachets are made from metallized plastic, and cannot be recycled. They are pure pollution, and should be banned.
- gregwebs 3y agoApple sauce tastes sweet as well though so I am not following the logic here. It's always possible this is intentional, but it's more likely this kind of statement is a tactic to distract from the widespread minor lead contamination in these kinds of things and make people not question what the FDA or corporations are doing about lead contamination. Plastic and glass recycling is also a source of lead contamination! You are starting to take materials of unknown origin in a way where it is really difficult to assume any consistency from testing. If they are turned into a glass or plastic bottle and in particular if someone puts acid in them you have lead leeching. Plastic recycling is mostly a fantasy anyways. Much of the plastic that goes into a recycling stream is just thrown away. If it is recycled that's only at most for one more use. We could be making returnable, washable jars, but probably someone will say we can't because it's not safe because someone could have intentionally poisoned a jar with lead before they returned it!
- oh_sigh 3y ago40 years from now, I wonder what kind of health effects will be experienced by the millions of people who feel compelled to buy food and other products that go in/on their body from stores like Dollar Tree.
- alephnerd 3y agoBecause HNers are confusing Drug Regulation, Food Regulation, and Biologics Regulation, here's the FDA's Organizational Chart [0] If you aren't a drug or biologic, you will be regulated by the "Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition", which regulates food, ingredients, supplements, cosmetics, additives, etc. It is also the least funded part of the FDA. Drug and Biologics regulation is much stricter due to the aftermath of the Ranbaxy Scandal. Ranbaxy was one of the largest generic manufacturers in the world, and a major Japanese pharma company invested billions in them in the 2000s. It turns out Ranbaxy had been fudging numbers since the 2000s, and they faced serious DoJ charges in 2013 [1] where they had to pay almost 15% of their entire capital on hand in fines. This whole scandal also lead the US FDA's Drug Division to begin on site testing in India and China. Ranbaxy was always a shitshow, given their origins [2] [0] - https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organization/fda-organization-charts https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organization/fda-organizat... [1] - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/generic-drug-manufacturer-ranbaxy-pleads-guilty-and-agrees-pay-500-million-resolve-false https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/generic-drug-manufacturer-ran... [2] - https://www.cnbctv18.com/business/companies/backstory-bhai-mohan-singh-and-parvinder-singhs-bitter-tussle-for-control-of-ranbaxy-10025571.htm https://www.cnbctv18.com/business/companies/backstory-bhai-m...