October 16, 2016
According to the dictionary, Adulteration usually refers to “mixing other matter of an inferior and sometimes harmful quality with food or drink intended to be sold. As a result of adulteration, food or drink becomes impure and unfit for human consumption.”
Quality is usually attainable but it’s up to companies if they want to reach for it. The cases that I chose to blog about today is adulteration at its worst to me. The deceptive methods used are sophisticated, calculated, intentional, extensively crafted and definitely not a statistical probability of error.
It involved one of the largest dairy producers in China.
They first add water to increase the volume of raw milk and then melamine to make up for the diluted protein content. There is nothing protein about melamine but since melamine and protein both contain nitrogen, when companies test the milk for the further production of milk powder, diluted milk with melamine will pass off as milk with acceptable protein content.
The damage was devastating, 6 infants died from damaged kidneys, with 300,000 babies sick from the contaminated milk.
You can hardly find honey that’s labelled “Made in China”. That’s because honey handlers “wash” the honey of its Chinese origin by changing their packaging, forging documents and changing their place of origin.
Honey producers were surprised to see how certain brands of honey could sell their products at such low prices, prices way below production costs. The Australians decided to take action first. A consignment of honey bound for the U.S. was labelled “Made in Singapore”. The consignment was seized based on the fact that Singapore did not produce honey at that time. The whole scheme was unfolded: The Chinese dilute their honey with water, then filter them to remove impurities and antibiotics used to keep bees from falling ill. Next, honey importers got in touch with honey “brokers” who repackaged and moved the Chinese honey to Russia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, if Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, with falsified documents. In the U.S., only honey from China are tested. Honey labelled from other countries are less likely to be checked. And that’s how honey diluted with cheaper sweeteners and contaminated honey are brought to consumers as the real thing.
Why does the OJ you make at home tastes so different every time you make it and you just can’t get it to taste as great and consistent as the one from the supermarket? Anything from nature can hardly be consistent in taste all year round. So what is the key to making consistent-tasting fruit juices all year round, no matter where the oranges come from? These key ingredients are far from natural – flavour packs from flavour or fragrance companies and ethyl butyrate. What about it being 100% natural? It may refer to a 10% part of real fruit juice being 100% natural but stripped of its oxygen and flavour to extend the shelf-life of the juice.
Tropicana, a market leader in creating slogans that highlights the freshness of its products, has faced more than 20 lawsuits on misleading labelling.
is a $7 billion industry in the U.S. Bodybuilders, athletes and dieters are willing to pay around $48 for 24 servings of supplements, not knowing they are getting only 44 to 48% of what’s labelled as 100% protein, with the rest being cheaper amino acids that do not have the same benefits as complete protein. Misleading and inaccurate labelling is a big issue for protein powders, with reputable companies being implicated for selling products containing far less contents than stated on their labels. Substituting the complete protein with cheaper amino acids allow tests to register protein amounts based on nitrogen content. However, a layman will not know how much complete protein he or she is actually getting. Consumers are not only not getting what they paid for, but are misled into thinking they are getting as much as what’s stated on the labels which they rely on to make their choices.
Popular medicinal herbs consumers take for indications like fighting off colds and boosting memory, may not even be close to what they seem to be.
DNA barcoding in the U.S. have revealed herbal pills sold to be rice, wheat or soybean fillers instead. Some 2015 news reports in the U.S. revealed 79% of the products tested did not contain any of the primary ingredient labelled on the bottle, but rather some other plant material.
I would like to end with a quote which I felt, hit the nail on the head:
“Today’s most successful brand builders make promises that they can keep… They make sure that product development delivers on the commitments they make.” – Paul J. D’Arcy, an entrepreneur and CMO based in Austin, Texas
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