People still have the notion that food labeling, by and large, reflect the truth. The more savvy customers stay away from products whose labeling just says 'distributed' knowing full well that it is a telltale sign of imported foodstuff.
But in some cases, where there are mixes or blends, producers are not obligated to disclose each and every country of origin of the foodstuff in their product, or they can simply bury it in the packaging.
And that is how an epidemic of Hepatitis A suddenly ran rampant even amongst the most health conscious of customers.
In fact, the product that caused the recent Hepatitis A outbreak, called "organic, antioxidant blend', was sold by a company called Townsend Farms, whose label included the wording, writ large: "Since 1906, field to farm to family"
Such type of labeling would mislead anyone. It implies no less than a closed circuit and rigorous production chain from their farms, in the United States, directly to the consumer.
But the culprit of the Hepatitis A epidemic which has sickened 99 people in several states, were pomegranate seeds from Turkey, one of the three berries in the frozen berry blend distributed by several chains of grocery stores and Costco.
The issue here is that Hepatitis A is a product of direct contamination of the handler to the food while processing, i.e., peeling, handling, bagging, etc.
In the fine print of the label, truth be told, there is a minuscule script that details the fact that the product does come from around the world, but the larger print leads the customer to believe the product is American.
So at the heart of this, is not only that the consumer has been exposed to a pathogen, which could have originated in the US too, as it has before, but the fact too that the consumer did not have a choice in selecting the product since its true derivation was buried in barely legible script.
More importantly it highlights how the US is rubber stamping organic produce from abroad without proper verification and testing. A product determined by someone once a year (if we're lucky) as organic abroad, can be imported and assume the USDA Organic label without a glitch.
What is more troubling, the US is moving towards food labeling rules that would exclude country of origin, because exporting countries, like China, contend that it makes their product less desirable, due to people 'misconceptions'.
The FDA furthermore, is dragging their feet to meet the required import safety improvements requested by Congress a while back. And as they drag their feet, people are getting sick from frozen berries from Turkey, Listeria in Imported cheese, and Salmonella from imported papayas.
Source : Food Safety News 6.14.13
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