Tainted cinnamon applesauce pouches that have sickened scores of children in the U.S. may have been purposefully contaminated with lead, according to FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones.
“We’re still in the midst of our investigation. But so far all of the signals we’re getting lead to an intentional act on the part of someone in the supply chain and we’re trying to sort of figure that out,” Jones said in an exclusive interview. The pouches found to be contaminated were sold under three brands — Weis, WanaBana and Schnucks — that are all linked to a manufacturing facility in Ecuador. The FDA says it’s conducting an inspection of that facility.
“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.”
I would love for the FDA to be more proactive about food safety in a way I particularly experience it - gluten. Currently gluten free labeling is on a ‘ok, if you say so’ basis where the only regulatory action is a recall, which might happen if hundreds of people complain about a product to the FDA. This creates a motivation for companies to label accurately and test for gluten, but with the difficulty in connecting celiac poisoning to a specific product, many companies get away with being sloppy about it. The regulatory limit on the gluten concentration is also outdated. If the FDA tested more products just to check up on them, that would be great.