Ingredients
Risk Management for Organic Ingredients
By Dr. Winfried
Fuchshofen
With the growth of the global marketplace, the trade and the production
of food products has become ever
more international. Consequently, one product may contain ingredients from several
countries or even several continents. In addition, with the demand for convenience foods
and other processed goods, ingredient lists
are getting longer and products are becoming
increasingly complex.
These elements have introduced new risks
of contamination into ingredient sourcing for
all food processors, both organic and conventional. However, organic consumers have
higher expectations of health and safety, thus
it becomes even more important for organic
processors to go the extra mile to limit risks.
To do this, it’s important to first understand the types of risks that exist and the reasons for contamination. Based on these, you
can take measures to prevent contamination
of organic products on several levels.
Reasons for Contamination
Insufficient Quality Control. This is the
root of most contamination, with the 2009
peanut butter Salmonella scare as one of the
most recent incidents. The Peanut Corporation of America, which co-packed both organic and conventional products, overlooked
some serious food safety protocols resulting in
637 people becoming ill and nine deaths.
While the issues that caused the outbreak had
nothing to do with whether or not the product was organic, the outbreak does highlight
the importance of taking extra measures to
ensure quality control, even when working
with co-packers who are supposed to be responsible for such things.
Besides pathogens, heavy-metal contamination is another key area for quality control. A
few years back, several European processors
imported organic honey from China with
traces of lead contamination due to the use of
non-lined, non-food-grade storage containers.
In addition, natural contamination can be
caused by high heavy-metal content in volcanic soil found in areas such as Central and
South America. This has been an issue with
cocoa beans in the past because the plant
tends to have more of an affinity for quick
heavy-metal uptake than other plants. One of
the more publicized cases of this was lead
contamination in products manufactured by
an organic chocolate company in the spring
of 2006. While only a relatively small amount
of chocolate made from Ecuadorian cocoa
beans was affected, the publicity around this
instance was considerable.
Historically, one of the biggest cases of lack
of quality control was the 2002 “nitrofen scandal” in Germany, when this pesticide was
found in organic chicken meat used in baby
food. While this carcinogenic and teratogenic
substance had been banned in West Germany
long before this incident, Nitrofen was still
used in East Germany up to the reunification
in 1990. At that point, substantial quantities of
several pesticides, among them nitrofen, had
to be destroyed. Unfortunately, not all of it
was destroyed properly and in this case, about
1000 metric tons of organic grain was tainted
with the substance after being stored in a
barn that had once been used to store nitrofen. The case came to light through the
chemical analysis of organic chicken meat
used in baby food.
Contamination Due to Fraud. Although
documented cases of fraud in organic ingredients are relatively rare, there have been a few
incidences. The biggest case of fraud in organic products ever reported is the import of
29,000 metric tons of wheat from Eastern
Europe into Belgium in 1999, which was
