Belgium pulls more Haagen-Dazs ice-creams from sale

BRUSSELS - Belgium on Tuesday extended an order to recall certain Haagen-Dazs ice-creams from sale after the discovery of traces of a chemical linked to cancer, such as lymphoma and leukemia. 

The move was triggered by an EU food safety alert and Spain and France have also issued recalls of several Haagen-Dazs products.

After already recalling 10 products last Friday, the Belgian national food health agency added seven more Haagen-Dazs products to the list on Tuesday. 

The latest move concerns tubs and minicups made by Haagen-Dazs, a brand owned by US manufacturer General Mills, with use-by dates of between March and April 2023, with flavours including Vanilla, Belgian Chocolate, Macadamia Nut Brittle and Pralines & Cream.

Customers who had bought Haagen-Dazs products affected by the recalls were told not to eat them, destroy them and to contact General Mills for a refund.

The alert was relayed on the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed system at the request of France, which last month detected 2-Chloroethanol in checks on some Haagen-Dazs products, triggering the initial recall.

2-Chloroethanol is a compound found in ethylene oxide (ETO), a carcinogenic chemical used as a pesticide and cleaning chemical, and has properties that damage DNA. 

General Mills said last week that "trace levels of ETO can be sourced to one ingredient (vanilla extract) provided by one of our suppliers".

Outside the EU, Brazil's ANVISA health monitoring agency last month issued its own alert over vanilla Haagen-Dazs products imported from France.

Despite its name, Haagen-Dazs does not have Nordic origins. It was founded by a Polish-Jewish couple in New York who gave it a brand they thought sounded Danish.

Agence France-Presse

E. coli lettuce outbreak traced to California

NEW YORK, United States - An outbreak of E. coli linked to romaine lettuce appears to have been traced to crops in California, the US food authority said Monday. 

American consumers were warned against eating the leafy salad by health officials last week.

The outbreak has caused 43 people to become sick in the US and another 22 in Canada, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"Our investigation at this point suggests that romaine lettuce associated with the outbreak comes from areas of California that grow romaine lettuce over the summer months," the FDA said in a statement.

"The outbreak appears to be related to 'end of season' romaine lettuce harvested from these areas," it said.

The harvest has now shifted to other areas and it was "critically important to have a 'clean break' in the romaine supply available to consumers in the US in order to purge the market of potentially contaminated romaine lettuce," the FDA said.

It added that the break in supply appears to have been accomplished after officials requested on November 20 that the produce be withdrawn from the market and destroyed.

On the same day -- two days before the Thanksgiving holiday when Americans gather and feast together -- the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised consumers not to eat any romaine lettuce and to throw away any they might have in their homes.

jum/wd/ecl

source: news.abs-cbn.com

World's top pork supplier shuts China slaughterhouse in race to contain deadly swine fever

* WH Group ordered to shut Zhengzhou plant for 6 weeks

* 2nd outbreak in 2 weeks in China of African swine fever

* Previously undetected in China or East Asia

* Authorities ban movement of pigs, pork in affected area

* Stirs concerns about spread across world's largest pig herd 


BEIJING - China has ordered the world's top pork producer, WH Group Ltd, to shut a major slaughterhouse as authorities race to stop the spread of deadly African swine fever (ASF) after a second outbreak in the planet's biggest hog herd in two weeks.

The discovery of infected pigs in Zhengzhou city, in central Henan province, about 1,000 kilometers from the first case ever reported in China, has stirred animal health experts' fears of fresh outbreaks - as well as food safety concerns among the public.

Though often fatal to pigs, with no vaccine available, ASF does not affect humans, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

ASF has been detected in Russia and Eastern Europe as well as Africa, though never before in East Asia. It is one of the most devastating diseases to affect swine herds. It occurs among commercial herds and wild boars, is transmitted by ticks and direct contact between animals, and can also travel via contaminated food, animal feed, and international travelers.

WH Group said in a statement that Zhengzhou city authorities had ordered a temporary six-week closure of the slaughterhouse after some 30 hogs died of the highly contagious illness on Thursday. The plant is one of 15 controlled by China's largest pork processor Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development , a subsidiary of WH Group.

Zhengzhou city authorities have banned all movement of pigs and pork products in and out of the affected area for the same six weeks.

Shuanghui said in a separate statement on Friday it culled 1,362 pigs at the slaughterhouse after the infection was discovered.

The infected pigs had travelled by road from a live market in Jiamusi city in China's northeastern province of Heilongjiang, through areas of high pig density to central Henan. Another northeastern province, Liaoning, has culled thousands of pigs since a first case of ASF was reported two weeks ago.

The pigs' long journey, and the vast distance between the two cases, stoked concerns about the spread of disease across China's vast pig herd - and into East Asia.

"The areas of concern now involve multiple Chinese provinces and heighten the likelihood of further cases," the Swine Health Information Center, a U.S. research body, said in a note.

'A LITTLE SCARED'

As Zhengzhou city froze pig movements, Heilongjiang authorities were also investigating whether the pigs involved were infected in the northeastern province bordering Russia.

Meanwhile comments on the country's Twitter-like Weibo highlighted worries about the safety of eating pork, a staple in China's diet with retail sales topping $840 billion each year. The relationship between people and pigs in China is close, with the Chinese word for "home" made up of the character "roof" over the character for "pig".

Posts expressing concern that infected meat may enter the food stream and fears about whether it is safe to eat pork garnered the most attention.

"A little scared. What will happen if you eat (pork)?" said one poster.

WH Group said on Friday it did not expect the closure of the Zhengzhou slaughterhouse to have any adverse material impact on business, helping its shares rise 1.6 percent after slumping 10 percent on Thursday. Shuanghui shares were up 1.3 percent on Friday afternoon.

The Zhengzhou operation accounts for an "insignificant" portion of WH Group's operations, the company said, adding it does not expect any disruption to supply of pork and related products as a result of the temporary closure. On Thursday, Shuanghui said it had diverted sales orders to other operations.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Contaminated eggs scandal spreads from Europe to Asia

A scandal involving eggs contaminated with insecticide spread to 15 EU countries, Switzerland and as far away as Hong Kong on Friday as the European Commission called for a special meeting on the growing crisis.

Ministers and food safety chiefs from around the European Union are set to meet on September 26 in a bid to get countries to stop "blaming and shaming" each other over the scare involving the chemical fipronil.

Millions of eggs have been pulled from supermarket shelves across Europe and dozens of poultry farms closed since the discovery of fipronil, which can harm human health, was made public on August 1.


The issue has sparked a row between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, the three countries at the epicentre of the crisis, about how long they knew about the problem.

"Blaming and shaming will bring us nowhere and I want to stop this," Vytenis Andriukaitis, the European Commissioner for health and food safety, told AFP as he announced the meeting.

"We need to work together to draw the necessary lessons and move forward instead."

European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said that "this is not, let's be clear, a crisis meeting" and it is being held next month to get "distance to the events".

Fipronil is commonly used to get rid of fleas, lice and ticks from animals but is banned by the European Union from use in the food industry.

The EU insists there is no threat to human health, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says that when eaten in large quantities it can harm people's kidneys, liver and thyroid glands.

- Dutch admit 'errors' -

Brussels said the 15 affected EU countries were Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Britain, Austria, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Denmark, along with non-EU Switzerland.

But in a sign the crisis is going global, Brussels also announced that Hong Kong had received some tainted eggs from the Netherlands, with the southern Chinese city becoming the first place in Asia known to be affected.

As well as dealing with the immediate food safety issue, the EU is also seeking to calm tempers over the egg row after a series of divisive crises in the bloc in recent years, from Brexit to migration.

Belgium earlier this week accused the Netherlands of knowing about the fipronil eggs since November 2016 and failing to notify other countries.

On Thursday Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers admitted the government had made "errors" but denied a cover-up.

"We were well aware of a report of the presence of fipronil in the pens of egg-laying hens in November 2016, but there was no indication at the time that fipronil itself was found in the eggs," said Schippers.

A Dutch whistleblower separately said he had told the authorities that Chickfriend, the Dutch company at the centre of the scandal, was illegally using fipronil in the treatment of lice in chicken pens in The Netherlands.

"I am the anonymous whistleblower," Nick Hermens told the NPO public broadcaster.

A Belgian company, Poultry Vision, has said it provided Chickfriend with the chemical.

Dutch and Belgian investigators carried out coordinated raids on several premises on Thursday, arresting two people at Chickfriend.

However, Belgium itself has been forced to admit that it knew about fipronil in eggs back in June but kept it secret for nearly two months because of a criminal investigation.

- Fresh discoveries -

Fresh discoveries of contaminated eggs have continued daily.

Denmark said on Friday it had found two tonnes of fipronil-tainted scrambled eggs, bringing the total of contaminated eggs to 22 tonnes, mainly from Belgium.

Poland said it had discovered about 40,000 eggs imported from Germany.

French Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert said that since April the country had sold nearly 250,000 contaminated eggs, imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, but the risk for consumers was "very low" given French eating habits.

The food scare is one of the biggest to hit Europe since the 2013 horsemeat scandal when equine meat was falsely labelled and mis-sold.

Previous food scandals include contamination of chickens and eggs by dioxin in 1999, which began in Belgium, and mad-cow disease -- cattle feed contaminated by the ground-up carcasses of animals infected with a deadly brain disorder -- which ran from roughly 1986-1998 and started in Britain.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

McDonald's Japan apologizes for food safety scandal

TOKYO - McDonald's Holdings Co. (Japan) apologized Wednesday for the contamination of some food items at its restaurants, in another scandal that could further weigh on sales of the fast-food chain.

"We deeply apologize for having caused considerable inconvenience and concern," Takehiko Aoki, senior vice president of the company, said at a press conference. President Sarah Casanova was not present at the news conference due to a business trip.

The Japanese unit of the world's biggest fast-food chain admitted there were several cases in recent months in which customers had found objects such as bits of vinyl or plastic in a Chicken McNugget and other products sold at outlets in different parts of the country.

"These cases will not cause serious health problems," Aoki added.

In one incident, a child suffered a slight cut in the mouth caused by a 2 to 3 centimeter piece of plastic in a Chocolate Sundae sold at an outlet in Fukushima Prefecture on Dec. 19. McDonald's Japan said the problem was due to a faulty dessert machine and the restaurant had stopped using it.

It was also learned Tuesday that a customer in Osaka Prefecture had complained in August of a small object in fries that was later found to be a human tooth. The company said it is unlikely that the tooth had dropped into the fries during preparation.

The latest scandal is another blow to McDonald's Japan, already struggling with falling sales following a food-safety scandal last summer involving a Chinese-based meat supplier caught relabeling expired meat and breaching other rules.

The company has since halted all imports of chicken products from China, switching its sourcing to Thailand.

But the contaminated nugget, found in Aomori Prefecture on Saturday, had been produced at a Thai plant.

Nuggets produced on the same manufacturing line at the plant were delivered to restaurants in a total of 14 prefectures, including Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and 99 percent have already been sold, the company said.

In October, McDonald's Japan projected it would log a 17 billion yen ($142.7 million) net loss for 2014, its first swing to the red in 11 years, compared with a net profit of 5.14 billion yen for 2013.

The company has said it is investing in measures to improve product quality, such as unannounced audits of suppliers and distribution of more food-quality information to customers.

Customers showed a mixed reaction to the latest scandal.

"I'm a bit scared and hope they will quickly tell us the cause," said a woman, 63, who often visits a McDonald's restaurant in Tokyo where a piece of vinyl was found in a nugget on Dec. 31. She only had coffee Wednesday.

A 65-year-old office worker said, "We won't die even if we eat them. The number of customers may decline but I think they will come back in six months." He added he will continue to use the restaurant.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

McDonald's to boost China supplier audits after food safety scandal

SHANGHAI - McDonald's Corp will increase the number of audits it conducts of suppliers in China, the firm said on Tuesday, after a food scandal in July dented China sales at the U.S. fast food chain and rival Yum Brands Inc .

In a statement emailed to Reuters on Tuesday, the restaurant chain said half of the audits would be done unannounced and would be carried out by third party auditors and internal teams.

Industry insiders had told Reuters that suppliers in China often knew about audits in advance.

McDonald's will push for more video monitoring at its Chinese suppliers and send more quality control specialists to all meat production facilities, it added.

The firm has also created a new role to oversee food safety governance in China and will launch a hotline later this year for whistleblowers to report food safety issues.

Last week, Chinese police arrested six staff from McDonald's supplier OSI Group Inc following allegations in July that workers at its Shanghai Husi plant used expired meat and doctored food production dates.

McDonald's has suspended supply from all Husi plants in China and is reviewing its relationship with parent OSI pending an investigation by Chinese regulators.

The OSI scandal dragged in KFC-parent Yum, coffee chain Starbucks Corp and Burger King Worldwide Inc among others. It also spread to Hong Kong and Japan.

China is McDonald's third largest market by the number of outlets and the number one market for KFC-parent Yum. McDonald's currently has over 2,000 restaurants in mainland China.

However, China's $1 trillion food processing industry struggles with fragmented suppliers and a lack of traceability, meaning auditors and food chains often remain one step behind in keeping supply chains in check.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

China hit by new flood of dead pigs in river

BEIJING - Chinese authorities have found 157 dead pigs in a river, state media said Wednesday, a year after 16,000 carcasses were discovered in Shanghai's main waterway, underscoring the country's food safety problems.

The dead porkers were recovered from the Gan river in Jiangxi, which supplies drinking water to the provincial capital Nanchang and is a tributary of the Yangtze, one of China's main waterways, the official news agency Xinhua said.

But tests showed that the tap water remains "safe for drinking", it said, citing Nanchang authorities.

"Another 20 pigs have been fished out of the Gan River, for a total of 157," state broadcaster CCTV said on an account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

Photos posted by CCTV showed staff in white clothing and face masks looking over carcasses lined up on a river bank.

Ear tags indicated the animals came from Zhangshu city in the central Chinese province, CCTV said, citing Jiangxi's agriculture department.

Zhangshu authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.

A year ago China was stunned by the appearance of more than 16,000 dead pigs floating along parts of the Huangpu river which flows through Shanghai -- one in a series of food-safety scandals in recent years.

No official explanation was given for the incident, which hugely embarrassed China's commercial hub.

Last May police detained 900 people for crimes including selling rat and fox meat as beef and mutton.

And in 2008 six babies died and 300,000 others fell ill in a massive scandal involving contaminated milk powder.

Public concern about food safety is high and in his address to China's parliament this month Premier Li Keqiang pledged to "apply the strictest possible oversight, punishment and accountability to prevent and control food contamination and ensure that every bite of food we eat is safe".

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Dead pigs in China river exceed 13,000

SHANGHAI - The number of dead pigs found in a river running through China's commercial hub Shanghai had reached more than 13,000, the government and state media said Monday, as mystery deepened over the hogs' precise origin.

The Shanghai government said workers pulled 335 pigs out of the Huangpu river, which supplies 22 percent of the city's drinking water, on Monday, bringing the total to 9,795 since the infestation began earlier this month.

Shanghai has blamed farmers in Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang province for dumping pigs which died of disease into the river upstream, where the official Xinhua news agency said another 3,601 dead animals had been recovered so far.

The Jiaxing government has said the area is not the sole source of the carcasses, adding it had found only one producer that could be held responsible.

Shanghai had checked farms in its southwestern district of Songjiang, where the pigs were first detected, but found they were not to blame, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said on Monday.

The scandal has spotlighted China's troubles with food safety, adding the country's most popular meat to a growing list of food items rocked by controversy.

Samples of the dead pigs have tested positive for porcine circovirus, a common swine disease that does not affect humans.

"Due to some farming households having a weak recognition of the law, bad habits, and lack of increased supervision and capability for treatment have led to the situation," the national agriculture ministry's chief veterinarian Yu Kangzhen said.

Yu attributed a higher mortality rate among pigs to colder weather this spring, though he ruled out an epidemic, the ministry said in statement posted on its website over the weekend.

The Shanghai government said in its statement that the quality of drinking water remained within national standards, despite widespread worries over water quality among the city's 23 million residents.

The thousands of dead pigs have drawn attention to China's poorly regulated farm production. Animals that die from disease can end up in the country's food supply chain or improperly disposed of, despite laws against the practice.

In Wenling, also in Zhejiang, authorities announced last week that 46 people had been jailed for up to six-and-a-half years for processing and selling pork from more than 1,000 diseased pigs.

China faced one its biggest food-safety scandals in 2008 when the industrial chemical melamine was found to have been illegally added to dairy products, killing at least six babies and making 300,000 people ill.

In another recent incident, the American fast-food giant KFC faced controversy after revealing that some Chinese suppliers provided chicken with high levels of antibiotics, in what appeared to be an industry-wide practice.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Delays in new food-safety regulations cause frustration

Last year President Obama signed a law hailed as the most sweeping overhaul of food safety in 70 years. Fast forward 17 months, and major portions have yet to be implemented.

The Food Safety Modernization Act moves the Food and Drug Administration away from its traditional role of responding to adulterated food to a more modern one of requiring companies to stop contamination before it happens. It allows the agency to issue mandatory recalls and hire more food-safety inspectors. The act passed with bipartisan support and broad backing from the food industry and consumer and public health groups.

The law will touch the vast majority of foods Americans eat. FDA oversees most of the nation's food supply, except for meat, poultry and processed eggs, which are under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But the new law hasn't gotten out of the starting gate. Regulations implementing the law are awaiting approval by the Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for evaluating their effectiveness and making sure they are consistent with administration policies.

Three of the most important rules awaiting approval are:

•Safety standards for irrigation water, manure, worker hygiene and wildlife that can contaminate fresh fruits and vegetables.

•Foreign supplier verification programs that make importing companies responsible for the safety of the foods they bring into the United States.

•Requirements that food companies have a plan in place to identify possible sources of contamination and specify what they will do to deal with them.

By executive order, OMB is authorized to review new rules for three months and can extend the review period for an additional month. These rules have been at OMB for more than seven months.

OMB spokeswoman Moira Mack says public safety regulations can require extensive review. "The administration is working as expeditiously as possible to implement this legislation we fought so hard for. When it comes to rules with this degree of importance and complexity, it is critical that we get it right," she says.

Food-safety advocates and industry groups are frustrated.

"There is no good reason for this delay," says Erik Olson, director of food programs with the Pew Health Group, a part of the Pew Charitable Trusts. "What's important is that these new protections of our food supply be put into place as soon as possible to protect all Americans from getting sick from contaminated food."

"You really have to wonder who is advising the president to delay these regulations," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, food-safety director with the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Polls show most people support food-safety legislation, she says. "It crosses party lines," she says. "People really understand that this is an essential function of government."

There's continued strong support from the food industry. Kraft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Walmart, Kroger, Cargill and Tyson are all on record as supporting the law.

Both the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Produce Marketing Association sent letters to Obama this spring encouraging the administration to publish the draft rules.

Produce Marketing Association members handle more than 90% of fresh produce sold to U.S. consumers. In his letter, President Bryan Silbermann said not publishing the rules is creating "uncertainty and paralysis. It is much more difficult for companies to invest in additional food safety safeguards without knowing what the FDA rules will be."

Voters are willing to pay for food safety, according to poll by the Make Our Food Safe coalition, made up of 10 public health and consumer-advocacy organizations. Among likely voters, 66% support additional funding for FDA to carry out new responsibilities related to food safety. Almost 75% were willing to pay up to 3% more for food to cover the new safety measures.

source: USA TODAY