Originally published by Candess Zona-Mendola, Unsafe Foods Editor.
By: Heather Williams
What’s in your spice cabinet? What is mingling in your spice jars? The real answer just might surprise you. From insects (both live and dead as well as whole or parts) to bird, insect, and other animal excrement. Hair from a variety of sources such as human, rodent, bat, sheep, dog, cat, and cow as well as other materials humans should not be consuming. Along with foreign materials, harmful bacteria has also been discovered. Salmonella, Staph, Clostridium perfringens, and even Bacillus cereus to name a few. If this concerns you, you are not alone.
Worldwide there have been 14 outbreaks between the years 1978 to 2010 linked back to dirty spices reported from Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Serbia, United Kingdom, and the United States. This has sickened an estimated 2,000 people and has killed at least 2. Infants and children were affected more than adults. Knowing that not all countries have the ability to track foodborne illnesses or categorize products in very different ways makes these statistics very conservative. There could be many more cases that were unable to be included in this study. This information has raised enough eyebrows and flags to prompt an U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigation. In 2013 a report from the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Food and Drug Administration U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was published amid a crackdown on imported spices.
What Spices are Affected?
According to the FDA report, 12% of spices imported into the United States are contaminated. By comparison, 7% of other food products imported in the United State are contaminated. The study found that whole spices were more likely to be “filthy” with 15% identified compared to cracked or ground spices of which 11% were identified. “Filth” was found most often in capsicum, which is an ingredient in salsas and hot sauces. Sesame seeds and seasoning mixes were also high on the list.
According to previous outbreak data, black pepper, white pepper, red pepper, paprika, turmeric, anise, fennel seed were spices identified. Spice blends have also been implicated in previous spice related outbreaks such as curry powder (blend of spices) and seasoning mixes (2 a few cases a mix associated with a flavored broccoli powder used to coat a snack food). Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, South America, Turkey, and Vietnam were countries of origins in these cases.
Outside of outbreaks, many spices were tested for a variety of Salmonella species. Many of the spices we use every day came up positive. A sampling of some allspice, annatto seed, basil, bay, caraway seed, celery, chili powder, coriander, cumin, dill week, fenugreek, finger root, five spice, ginger, laurel leaf, mace, masala, mint, nigella, nutmeg, onion, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme were positive for one of many specifies of Salmonella.
Origins of spices contaminated with Salmonella species was widespread. 37 of the 79 countries investigated had at least one shipment test positive for a Salmonella species. A total of 187 samples were tested. Spices from India were the biggest offenders accounting for almost half of the positive samples. Other countries identified with Salmonella infection in order of offenses include Mexico, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Canada.
Why is Contamination of Spices So Dangerous?
Beyond the gross factor of thinking about hair, dirt, feathers, and harmful bacteria in food that you generally consider safe, many seasonings and spices are applied during the consumption of ready to eat foods, which does not offer the heat of a cooking process to kill the pathogen. 70% of illnesses occurred when the spice was prepared after cooking according to reports. Additionally, very harmful bacterial such as Salmonella have been discovered in spice samples investigated though a study used in the FDA report.
How Do Spices Become Contaminated
To get to the bottom of the situation, you have to consider where the spices come from. Most of our spices do not come from a single farm, but a variety of farm sizes that use a full spectrum agricultural practices from the very manual process to more advanced mechanical processes. Some farms use farm animals to plow the fields and even harvest crops by hand. Some are dried in the open air, while some are dried in manufacturing facilities.
For spices, the practice of “multi-cropping” is fairly common. With multi-cropping, spices from small farms are combined with those from other small farms. The collections of the spices are then sold to spice exchanges or to processing and packing companies. This often makes finding the origins of the contamination difficult. In some cases, unopened packages of spices found at the manufacturing facilities tested positive for the pathogen, indicating the contamination had come from an early part in the process.
Spices are often contaminated because of a failure in the food safety system. Regulations are already in place in addition to the recently strengthened legislation in the farm-to-table process; however lapses have occurred leading to illness and contamination. This has been a result of poor or inconsistent application of the appropriate preventative controls currently required. This includes failure to limit animal access to the plant during harvest and drying phases, failure to limit insect and rodent access to spices during storage with an ineffective or absent pest control plan, and failure to subject spices to an “effective pathogen reduction treatment”
Current Regulations
Existing regulations in the United States are recently being strengthened in response to growing food safety concerns and increased imports into the country. This includes the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act FSMA, Good Agricultural Practices (FAPs), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act provides new tools to help control contamination and reduce cross contamination of spices. This includes the authority to mandate recalls, increases inspections both foreign and domestic, and provides for more prevention standard and safety mandates. Good Agricultural practices provide appropriate growing, harvesting, supply chain approval, and re-evaluation program practices. Good Manufacturing Practices implement validated microbial reduction processes, cleanliness specifications, a post-treatment sampling and testing program, and the development of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plans. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plans involve analyzing each step of the manufacturing process considering hazards, preventative measures, and after action activities for each risk factor.
There is hope that continued investigation and inspections will bring better practices and safer products brought into the food supply to the United States, whether imported or domestic.
Sources:
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