Food Fraud: What Are You Really Eating?

Photo Credit: We get Healthy Now

'When you order sushi at your favorite restaurant or pick up a pound of coffee from your local supermarket, you assume you’re getting the red snapper or Columbian beans as stated on the menu or label.

But not so fast. A growing number of cases of “food fraud” are occurring in the United States, such that you may not be able to tell what you’re really eating just by looking at the label.

Worse still, most of these cases are not highly publicized incidents like the recent scandal of UK supermarkets selling “beef” burgers that actually contained horse and pig meat. Instead, they’re ongoing cases of blatant misrepresentation among some incredibly common foods.'

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Food fraud in America: What are you really eating?

 
 Photo Credit: Commons Wikimedia

'Rhode Island Rep. Joseph McNamara is currently trying to pass legislation that would make fried squid the official state appetizer. Since Rhode Island is the squid capital of the world – hey, they have to be good at something – chances are the fried rings served there are exactly what they claim to be. 

Elsewhere, however, they may be serving you deep fried pig anus and calling it calamari.'

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DID PROP 37 REALLY LOSE OR WAS IT VOTE FRAUD?

'Hold your horses.

On election night, not long after the polls closed in California, the announcement came out: Prop 37 was losing. A little while later, it was all over. 37 had gone down to defeat.

But is that the whole story? No.

As of 2:30PM today, Thursday, November 8^th, two days after the election, many votes in California remain uncounted.

I tried to find out how many.

It turns out that the Secretary of State of CA, responsible for elections in the state, doesn’t know.

I was told all counties in California have been asked, not ordered, to report in with those figures. It’s voluntary.

So I picked out a few of the biggest counties and called their voter registrar offices. Here are the boggling results:

Santa Clara County: 180,000 votes remain uncounted.

Orange County: 241,336 votes remain uncounted.

San Diego County: 475,000 votes remain uncounted.'

[And there's more...]


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FDA Deletes 1 Million Signatures for GMO Labeling Campaign

'The ‘Just Label It” campaign has gotten more signatures than any campaign in history for the labeling of genetically modified foods. Since October of 2011, the campaign has received over 900,000 signatures, with 55 politicians joining in on the movement. 

So what’s the problem here? Evidently, the FDA counts the amount of signatures not by how many people signed, but how many different individual letters are brought to it. To the FDA, even tens of thousands of signatures presented on a single petition are counted as – you guessed it – a single comment. This is how, despite over a million supporters being gathered by the petition, the FDA concluded a count of only 394.'

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Declaration of Food Independence unveiled today in Wisconsin; signed by Vernon Hershberger and others

 

'Today at the raw milk / food freedom rally taking place in Wisconsin at the legal hearing for raw milk farmer Vernon Hershberger, organizers unveiled a Declaration of Food Independence. The document asserts the individual right to grow, trade and access real food without government intervention or control.'

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Most honey isn’t really honey

'Chances are, that stuff sittng in the plastic bear in your pantry doesn't technically qualify as honey. The FDA requires honey to have microscopic particles of pollen, which allow the honey to be traced to its source so regulators can be sure it comes from safe origins. But nearly all of the honey that's sold commercially in the U.S. has been filtered to get rid of that pollen. It could basically come from anywhere. And that means it's not honey, according to the FDA's definition.'

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Examining Ethics to Fight Food Fraud

Olive Oil: Most Adulterated Agricultural Product

SENATE RULES COMMITTEE Report
"of 73 olive oils . Only 4% were pure olive oil" - FDA"

'Is the olive oil you're using really olive oil? According to the New Yorker, chances are good that what's in that bottle is cut with hazelnut, sunflower seed, or canola oil.'

'In 1997 and 1998, olive oil was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union, prompting the E.U.'s anti-fraud office to establish an olive-oil task force. ("Profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks," one investigator told me.)'

'There has been a rash of food fraud scandals recently, including Chinese-manufactured melamine-tainted infant formula that sickened at least 300,000 children and killed six last year. Manufacturers added the chemical to watered-down formula in order to reduce costs and cheat tests for protein content. The article’s authors, Wing-Fu Lai and Zenobia Chan, re-examined the incident drawing on various philosophical studies of ethics from Epicurus to Confucius. They claim that although legislation has a part to play to ensure food safety, in China and elsewhere, the role of ethics is often overlooked.'

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