Posted by Bradley in : food , add a comment
Why does the BBC's story on the US egg recall link to the US Egg Safety Center (an industry source) for information on which eggs have been recalled rather than to the list available from the FDA (a government source)? Unsurprisingly, the US Egg Safety Center's announcement contains reassurances which don't appear on the FDA list, such as "Less Than One Percent of All U.S. Eggs Affected" and:
The chance of an egg containing Salmonella Enteritidis is rare in the United States. Several years ago, it was estimated that 1 in 20,000 eggs might have been contaminated, which meant most consumers probably wouldn’t come in contact with such an egg but 1 time in 84 years. Since that time most U.S. egg farmers have been employing tougher food safety measures to help protect against food-borne illness. Chief among these methods are modern, sanitary housing systems; stringent rodent control and bio-security controls; inoculation against Salmonella Enteritidis; cleaning and sanitization of poultry houses and farms; and testing.
Posted by Bradley in : food , comments closed
Although the EU is concerned about animal welfare, that won't stop financial aid to reindeer slaughterers in Norway (a member of the EEA, not the EU). The EFTA Surveillance Authority recently said that such aid wouldn't constitute unlawful state aid under the EEA Agreement:
Reindeers and products processed from reindeers, in so far as they do not fall under Chapters 25 to 97 of the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) or are specified in Protocol 3 to the EEA Agreement, fall outside the general scope of the application of the Agreement.
Posted by Bradley in : food , comments closed
It seems to be hard to be a European cheese producer these days. Roquefort producers have sent some of their cheese to Barack Obama to protest the US tariffs designed to penalise the EU for not allowing hormone treated beef into the EU. Lithuania's application to register a protected geographical designation for Germantas cheese (filed in the summer of 2005) was rejected (the decision was taken in December but it was officially published yesterday) by the Commission on the basis that the characteristics of the cheese were a result of its production method rather than of geography (seems like pretty standard stuff - but because only the Lithuanian text is authentic I don't know if there's anything I'm missing). And Italy is providing financial support to producers of parmesan.
Posted by Bradley in : food , comments closed
Reading the recent news about melamine contamination of foods produced in China, and remembering how friends with pets dealt with last year's pet food melamine contamination problem, I wonder how worried to be. A story which began with problems in infant formula spread to other products made with milk as an ingredient. For example, White Rabbit candy, which, according to the Wikipedia entry has been marketed as a healthy product, is one of the products affected. In deciding how worried to be I would like some data on the risks. The FDA website has a reassuring press release. This morning, the Europa website's press release page showed a release from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) with a link to a detailed statement assessing the risks (unfortunately, since I first saw the press release it has been pushed off the front page by other news). I'd far rather have details than platitudes, even where the details don't in the end help me very much.
The FDA announced:
The FDA has taken, and will continue to take, proactive measures to help ensure the safety of the American food supply. In conjunction with state and local officials, the FDA will continue to check Asian markets for food items that are imported from China and that could contain a significant amount of milk or milk proteins. In addition, the FDA has broadened its domestic and import sampling and testing of milk-derived ingredients and finished food products containing milk, such as candies, desserts, and beverages that could contain these ingredients from Chinese sources. Milk-derived ingredients include whole milk powder, non-fat milk powder, whey powder, lactose powder, and casein.
The EU Commission asked the EFSA to assess the risks to consumers, which it did in a 10 page statement, which states:
Even if for the time being there is no evidence that food products containing melamine have been imported into the EU, it is appropriate to assess, based on the information provided as regards the presence of melamine in milk and milk products,
the possible (worst case) exposure of the European consumer from the consumption of composite food products such as biscuits and confectionary (in particular chocolate) containing or made from milk and milk products containing melamine.
EFSA's conclusion:
In worst case scenarios, children eating products with the highest melamine contamination level reported at the 95th percentile level either as biscuits or confectionary could exceed the TDI of 0.5 mg/kg bodyweight on individual occasions. If consuming both chocolate and biscuits there is the potential for children to exceed the TDI by more than three times. It should be remembered that the dietary exposure calculation involving quality filled biscuits might be a gross overestimation of the actual situation since there is no indication that China exports such products to Europe, but it can not be completely excluded. The chocolate scenario is considered more realistic.
Posted by Bradley in : food , comments closed
Visiting Asheville, NC, after living in Miami for a while, the ingles supermarkets signs looked to me as though they were advertising something English, or for English people (in Spanish) - and this happened the 4th and 5th and even 10th time of reading the signs. I'm not sure I would have read them that way 10 years ago. Looking at the ingles website, however there's another link to Miami - Robert Ingles studied at UM!!
From the middle of the eighteenth century seasonal foxhunters began to centre their hunting activities on the town of Melton Mowbray. During the autumn and winter months, pigs were slaughtered, pork pies were made. These pies were carried in the pockets of the hunt servants to be eaten as snacks as they moved the horses around the villages at the convenience of the wealthy foxhunter. These delicious simple peasant pies soon came to the notice of the hard riding fox hunter who then began to carry them in pouches and pockets to eat while involved in the chase.
These wealthy seasonal hunters took such a liking to the splendid pies that were served on their breakfast table that they expected them to be served at their London clubs. In 1831, Edward Adcock commenced exporting pork pies from Melton Mowbray to London using the daily Leeds to London stagecoach. So the commercialisation and promotion of the Melton Mowbray pork pie began.
Melton Mowbray has been producing these pies for a long time, although given that fox hunting was banned in the UK under the Hunting Act 2004, and the traditional pies are now sold in supermarkets, one wonders about the continuing relevance of the historical description. Melton Mowbray itself hasn't changed as much as some other places over the last century or so:
Posted by admin in : food , comments closedBritish Food Fortnight was half-way through before I even noticed it. On the other hand, I live in Miami and had noticed Miami Spice. Twice as long and .... If only it weren't raining constantly.
It's the sick heart which has been the curse of modern Scottish politics. Try this counterfactual experiment: if Cook, Smith, and Dewar had been granted another 15 years apiece, how different would that entity which Gordon Brown calls "our Britain" be? Would the Labour party be a better, or worse, thing?