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Economic adulteration for a new era

Call me a regulatory geek if you must, but I enjoy mulling the different varieties of adulteration. Today we mull two in particular.

Pw 5320 Fly In Soup

First, there’s the “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.” variety. This is what we might call traditional adulteration, and I’d guess it’s the type most commonly understood by consumers. Something icky that doesn’t belong in the food, or something microbial that doesn’t belong, or dirt, muck. This type of adulteration makes food unappetizing, perhaps inedible, perhaps dangerous.

Second, though, is the type of adulteration that results in food containing stuff it oughtn’t, but that does not result in the food being dangerous, or inedible, or perhaps even unappetizing. It does, however, result in its being not what it purports to be. Think watered down orange juice claiming to be 100% fresh squeezed. Think “all meat” products that actually contain some meat but also some grain fillers. This is what we traditionally called “economic adulteration” because it results not in a danger to health, but in a ripoff.

And just to complicate the picture a bit, sometimes economically motivated adulteration does indeed result in danger. Think melamine in pet food, to make the pet food look like it had more protein than it did by adding melamine, a cheaper ingredient than real protein sources. Or think heparin, a blood thinner product with another substance substituted for heparin, or cough syrup with diethylene glycol in its glycerin.

When you think about it for a minute, you realize that attacking so-called economically motivated adulteration means approaching familiar issues from a different angle, since the problem involves counterfeiting-like crimes, of which packagers know all too well.

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