FDA Detains Orange Juice Shipments Over Fungicide Concerns

February 2, 2012

CBS News

Several orange juice shipments have been detained by the Food and Drug Administration after traces of illegal fungicide were detected.

The government says the juice is safe to drink. But the fungicide, carbendazim, is not approved for use in the U.S., so any juice that contains traces of it must be detained. Carbendazim is used in other countries to combat mold on orange trees.

The FDA said Friday it had detained about 11 percent of orange juice and orange juice concentrate imports since it started testing for the fungicide earlier this month. The agency detained 9 out of 80 total shipments at the border, while importers withdrew two additional shipments.

The government started testing for the chemical at the border after Coca-Cola – which owns juice brands Minute Maid and Simply Orange – reported finding the chemical in its own juice and in competing juices. Most orange juice products made by Coke and other companies contain a blend of juice from different sources including Brazil, where the fungicide is approved for use. All of the products detained or withdrawn were from Brazil and Canada.

Test results showed the highest levels found were in a Jan. 4 shipment from Brazil. That shipment contained up to 52 parts per billion of the fungicide, still far below the European Union’s maximum residue level of 200 parts per billion. Most of the shipments detained had much lower amounts.

The U.S. government does not have an official maximum residue level for carbendazim in orange juice, but the Environmental Protection Agency has said a detailed risk assessment of carbendazim showed no risks at up to 80 parts per billion, and real levels of concern are probably thousands of times higher.

Click here for the full report from CBSNews

FDA Seizes Nearly 14% Of Imported Orange Juice Over Fungicide

January 30, 2012

Los Angeles Times

By Matt Stevens

“Solution: Buy organic or locally grown oranges. Then juice.” –KTRN

Nearly 14% of orange juice imported to the U.S. since early this month has been seized by the Food and Drug Administration because it contained trace amounts of a fungicide, carbendazim, according to the agency.

FDA officials said the juice was safe to drink but that carbendazim, used to combat a fungus that leaves black spots on tree leaves, was not allowed in the U.S.

“We don’t feel that this is a safety problem,” FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said. “This is more of a regulatory issue.

“We don’t have any plans to call for a wholesale recall of orange juice.”

The FDA has also been testing domestically produced orange juice products. DeLancey said results of those tests would be released next week.

The agency began testing imported orange juice in liquid and concentrate form Jan. 4. Beverage giant Coca-Cola Co., which distributes orange juice under the Minute Maid and Simply Orange brands, said it had found the fungicide in its juice and rival juices, and reported the findings to the agency.

Coca-Cola spokesman Dan Schafer declined to comment Friday except to say, “All our products are safe and wholesome, and consumers can enjoy them with confidence.”

The FDA has collected samples from 80 shipments of juice and concentrate since testing began. Six of the seized shipments were from Canada and five from Brazil, DeLancey said. She said she did not know the volume of product in those shipments.

The U.S. imported $438 million worth of orange juice in 2010, according WiserTrade, a Massachusetts-based research organization.

Juice Product Assn. spokeswoman Stephanie Meyering said it was too soon to know how the FDA’s action might affect orange juice sales or prices in the U.S.

The FDA said it would hold on to the seized orange juice products for up to 90 days. The shippers can take the products back during that time or destroy them under agency supervision, DeLancey said.

Click here for the full report.

Coke Says It Found Fungicide in Orange Juice

January 12, 2012

Wall Street Journal

BY BETSY MCKAY, BILL TOMSON AND LESLIE JOSEPHS

Coca-Cola Co. said it found an unapproved fungicide in orange juice made by Coke and its competitors, and alerted federal regulators that some Brazilian growers had sprayed trees with the substance.

The beverage giant, which makes Simply Orange and Minute Maid, wouldn’t say which brands had shown the fungicide. Both brands contain juice from Brazil.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday an unnamed juice company had detected low levels of the fungicide in “its and competitors currently marketed finished products.” Those products include some that were on store shelves, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Read More at WSJ

The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice

August 16th, 2011

Food Renegade

By: KristenM

Do you buy orange juice at the store? If you do, I’m sure you’re careful to buy the kind that’s 100% juice and not made from concentrate. After all, that’s the healthier kind, right? The more natural kind? The kind without any additives? The kind that’s sold in the refrigerator section so it must be almost as good as fresh-squeezed orange juice?

If I’m describing you, then you’re either going to hate me or love me by the time you’re done reading this post. The truth is, that orange juice you feel so good about buying is probably none of those things. You’ve been making assumptions based on logic. The food industry follows its own logic because of the economies of scale. What works for you in your kitchen when making a glass or two of juice simply won’t work when trying to process thousands upon thousands of gallons of the stuff.

Haven’t you ever wondered why every glass of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice tastes the same, no matter where in the world you buy it or what time of year you’re drinking it in? Or maybe your brand of choice is Minute Maid or Simply Orange or Florida’s Natural. Either way, I can ask the same question. Why is the taste and flavor so consistent? Why is it that the Minute Maid never tastes like the Tropicana, but always tastes like its own unique beverage?

Generally speaking, beverages that taste consistently the same follow recipes. They’re things like Coca Cola or Pepsi or a Starbucks Frappuccino. When you make orange juice at home, each batch tastes a little different depending on the oranges you made it from. I hope you’re hearing warning bells in your head right about now.

The reason your store bought orange juice is so consistently flavorful has more to do with chemistry than nature.

Making OJ should be pretty simple. Pick oranges. Squeeze them. Put the juice in a carton and voilà!

But actually, there is an important stage in between that is an open secret in the OJ industry. After the oranges are squeezed, the juice is stored in giant holding tanks and, critically, the oxygen is removed from them. That essentially allows the liquid to keep (for up to a year) without spoiling– but that liquid that we think of as orange juice tastes nothing like the Tropicana OJ that comes out of the carton. (source)

In fact, it’s quite flavorless. So, the industry uses “flavor packs” to re-flavor the de-oxygenated orange juice:

When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine.

The formulas vary to give a brand’s trademark taste. If you’re discerning you may have noticed Minute Maid has a candy like orange flavor. That’s largely due to the flavor pack Coca-Cola has chosen for it. Some companies have even been known to request a flavor pack that mimics the taste of a popular competitor, creating a “hall of mirrors” of flavor packs. Despite the multiple interpretations of a freshly squeezed orange on the market, most flavor packs have a shared source of inspiration: a Florida Valencia orange in spring.

Why aren’t these flavor packs listed as ingredients?

Good question! As with all industrial foods, it’s because of our convoluted labeling laws. You see, these “flavor packs are made from orange by-products — even though these ‘by-products’ are so chemically manipulated that they hardly qualify as ‘by-products’ any more.” (source) Since they’re made from by-products that originated in oranges, they can be added to the orange juice without being considered an “ingredient,” despite the fact that they are chemically altered.

So, what should you do about it?

First off, I must ask: Why are you drinking juice?? Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fruit good for you. Did you know, for example, that it takes 6-8 medium sized apples to make just 1 cup of apple juice? You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. (I know I can barely eat one!) But you can casually throw back a cup of apple juice, and you would probably be willing to return for seconds. That’s why fruit juice is dangerous. It’s far too easy to consume far too much sugar.

So, my first piece of advice is to get out of the juice habit altogether. It’s expensive, and it’s not worth it.

My second piece of advice is to only drink juices that you make yourself, and preferably ones that you’ve turned into a healthy, probiotic beverage (like this naturally-fermented lemonade my own family enjoys). Sally Fallon Morrell’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook (pictured at right) has several lacto-fermented juice coolers that are pleasant, albeit expensive. (I especially like the Grape Cooler, Raspberry Drink, and Ginger Beer.) Want to make juicing easier? See here for where to buy juicers and Vitamix blenders.

And finally, opt out of the industrial food system as much as you can. If you learn anything at all from this post, it should be that you never know what’s in your food unless you grow it, harvest it, or make it yourself. Second best (and more practical for many, including myself) is to pay somebody I trust to do it — like the farmers at my Farmer’s Market, the cattle rancher I buy my annual grass-fed beef order from, or the chef at my local restaurant who’s willing to transparently answer questions about how he sources ingredients and what goes into the dish I’m ordering.

Click here for the full report from The Food Renegade

Why ’100% Orange Juice’ Is Still Artificial

August 4th, 2011

The Huffington Post

File this one under “things we always sort of knew, but wish we didn’t.” All that “100% orange juice, not from concentrate” stuff you’ve been drinking? Technically, it’s “not from concentrate,” but it’s not really 100% orange juice either, a report at Civil Eats details.

The process is rather depressing. Gizmodo explains part of the process:

Once the juice is squeezed and stored in gigantic vats, they start removing oxygen. Why? Because removing oxygen from the juice allows the liquid to keep for up to a year without spoiling. But! Removing that oxygen also removes the natural flavors of oranges. Yeah, it’s all backwards. So in order to have OJ actually taste like oranges, drink companies hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that make perfumes for Dior, to create these “flavor packs” to make juice taste like, well, juice again.

Any taste difference in say Minute Maid versus Tropicana is therefore due to the specific flavor pack the company uses. Since these flavor packs are made from orange byproducts, they don’t have to be considered an ingredient, and therefore are not required to appear on food labels. This is despite the fact they are chemically altered.

Perhaps its time to take the juicer out of that dusty corner in the garage.

UPDATE: Karen Mathis, the Public Relations Director of the Florida Department of Citrus wrote HuffPost Food the following letter that offers the citrus industry’s description of the process, without disputing any of the above:

Dear Ms. Polis,

On behalf of the Florida Department of Citrus, I am writing in response to the article on HuffPost Food, entitled “Why 100% Orange Juice is Still Artificial.” Please allow me to share further information.

Purchased by nearly 70 percent of American households, people choose 100 percent orange juice for its great taste and nutrition benefits. Both “from concentrate” and “not from concentrate” orange juice are healthy options that provide a variety of nutrients. By utilizing state-of-the-art technology, Florida is able to provide a consistent supply of high quality, nutritious orange juice year round.

By law, 100 percent orange juice is made only from oranges. The basic principle of orange juice processing is similar to how you make orange juice at home. Oranges are washed and the juice is extracted by squeezing the oranges. Seeds and particles are strained out. Orange juice is pasteurized to ensure food safety.

During processing, natural components such as orange aroma, orange oil from the peel, and pulp may be separated from the orange juice. After the juice is pasteurized, these natural orange components may be added back to the orange juice for optimal flavor.

Please visit www.OrangeJuiceFacts.com for more information about orange juice.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss in more detail. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Karen Mathis

Click here for the full report from The Huffington Post