Stefanie Giesselbach had the Feds closing in on her. Fast. But as the 30-year-old attempted to board a flight back to her native Germany, agents descended on her at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and took her into custody.
Giesselbach had been part of a masterful criminal enterprise, an $80 million scheme that involved a clandestine network of growers, importers, and distributors around the world. It operated like a drug cartel.
But the trafficked product wasn't heroin or cocaine. It was honey, the same sticky-sweet stuff that fills cute bear-shaped bottles on store shelves and in pantries across America.
Giesselbach's arrest opened the door to one of the largest cases of food fraud this country had ever seen and shed light on a crime that experts believe is rampant, and a serious threat to our food safety. As the details unspooled over the next four years, it became clearer how adulterated foods or mislabeled foods—which by some estimates make up close to 7 percent of our food supply—slip undetected into the U.S.
Patchwork safety controls, an underfunded FDA—these are no match for criminals like Stefanie Giesselbach.
Like most companies accused of food fraud, Giesselbach's, Alfred L. Wolff GmbH (ALW)—at the time, a large importer of the country's honey—was more concerned with making money than mayhem: By labeling honey that was produced in China so it appeared to have originated in other countries, the company was able to bypass hefty tariffs. But unlike scams involving knockoff handbags or cut-rate electronics, the consequences of these profiteering shenanigans posed a very real health threat to consumers.
That's because Chinese honey can be contaminated with drugs that are illegal in the United States food industry—and with good reason. Chloramphenicol, a common one, is a potent antibiotic that isn't approved for use in U.S. food or food-producing animals because it can lead to a potentially fatal type of bone marrow disorder. (The European Union completely banned the import of Chinese honey.)
It's likely that Giesselbach and her company knew about the contamination, of course, but they also probably knew how difficult food fraud is to uncover. So they were able to sell the drug-laced product to buyers who trusted ALW enough not to test the product, and to one company in Texas that agreed to ignore the contamination in return for a discount on the product. (ALW execs referred to this company as the "garbage can" for adulterated honey.)
ALW allegedly got away with the fraud for at least seven years—seven years in which its tainted honey was bought up by manufacturers and consumers who baked it into cookies or stirred it into tea. Even more alarming, shutting down this company's multimillion-dollar gambit has not stopped others from importing polluted products that end up in our food supply and our bodies.
The Fake in Your Fridge
Food Fraud is a booming enterprise, one that some experts estimate to be worth billions a year. And it isn't confined to adding illegal substances to a food; the crime encompasses any deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, ingredients, or packaging.
While it is impossible to know exactly how much counterfeit fare we scoop onto our plates every day, a recent report in the Journal of Food Science, which analyzed published records of food fraud from 1980 to 2010, found that in 95 percent of the fakeries, authentic material—for example, extra-virgin olive oil—was swapped for a less expensive substitute, such as palm or peanut oil.
It's a bummer to think that the fancy gourmet coffee you think you've been buying—at a premium!—from your local market or ordering at your favorite cafe may actually be some conventional variety. But consider yourself lucky if your budget is all that ends up being compromised.
For someone with a severe nut allergy who unwittingly sautes spinach in olive oil that has been cut with peanut oil, the dupe is downright dangerous, if not deadly. In 2003, after roughly 40 people were sickened, some with serious neurological effects such as seizures, authorities alleged that the culprit was tinkered-with tea in which cheap but toxic Japanese star anise was swapped in for a nontoxic Chinese variety.
And in some cases, the ill effects of food fraud may not be apparent right away. "It's often only in hindsight that we can say that an adulteration actually led to a health issue," says Markus Lipp, Ph.D., director of food standards at the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention, a scientific nonprofit that sets food ingredient standards in the United States.
Which means that by the time the crime is discovered, it's often too late to prevent or reverse potential long-term damage. Some adulterants may be discovered to cause brain or kidney damage over time, for example, but that information may come to light only after people have been unknowingly ingesting it, possibly for years.
"That's the biggest problem with food fraud," says Karen Everstine, research fellow at the National Center for Food Protection and Defense. "We don't know what the long-term health consequences are. That's why it doesn't get as much attention as I think it should. If people aren't dying immediately, no one thinks it's a big problem."
Weak Links in the Food Chain
The reality is, it's a bigger problem than ever. Because so many food-production conglomerates today are huge global corporations, the effects of adulterated products can be catastrophic and far-ranging. "Just one incident can be enormous," says John Spink, Ph.D., the associate director of Michigan State University's Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program, which was the first of its kind when it started in 2010 specifically to combat food fraud. "That's why there's a bigger risk to public health today."
Roughly 15 percent of the food we consume in America is imported, passing through some 300 ports of entry and physically inspected only a fraction of the time. One of the places you're likely to find fakes: your spice drawer. "We import almost all spices because we can't grow them in mass quantities here," says Everstine. In India, which grows almost all of the world's turmeric, media outlets reported that 99 percent of tested samples contained lead. (Ingesting lead has been linked to health problems including elevated blood pressure, decreased fertility, cataracts, nerve disorders, muscle and joint pain, and memory or concentration problems.) Spice traders may mix in lead-containing coal tar dyes or lead chromate to achieve that lovely yellow color. Just last year, turmeric sold at a well-known nationwide chain was recalled from its stores in more than 40 states due to lead contamination.
But recalls aren't always enough. In 2005, Sudan 1, an illegal and potentially carcinogenic food dye that is normally used for coloring plastics, made its way into Worcestershire sauce that was sold in the U.S. Nearly 30,000 bottles got onto store shelves, and there's no way of knowing if all were removed before they were bought and consumed. More recently, Indian media reports surfaced about a raid last November on an Indian spice company that revealed its chili powder—set to be exported to the United States—was tainted with Sudan IV, a similar cancer-causing adulterant.
You'd think the risk of food fakery would be lower with nonpackaged foods, but in July, an investigation from an international conservation organization called Oceana found that roughly one-third of the seafood it tested in southern Florida was mislabeled. "The complex and often obscure path that seafood takes from boat to plate provides an open door for illegal activity," the report stated. The findings were disturbing, it said, leaving consumers unable to protect their health: One fish labeled grouper was actually king mackerel, which the FDA advises women of childbearing age not to eat because of its high mercury levels; and fish marketed as white tuna or whitefish was subbed with escolar, a species that contains a naturally occurring toxin that can cause severe digestive problems. (The FDA advises against its sale; if it is sold, it should come with a warning. It was banned in Italy and Japan due to health concerns.)
An Evolving Threat
Combating food fraud is just as hard as detecting it, for many of the same reasons. "The bad guys keep evolving," says Spink. "If we say, 'Here's how you can identify a good product, look at this label, buy it this way,' they'll find a new way to deceive us." Experts say that when Chinese smugglers realized that sweetening supposedly "pure" honey with high fructose corn syrup was harder to test for than regular corn syrup, they used that instead.
This kind of comestibles arms race may be making things worse by causing criminals to resort to ever-new and unexpected adulterants to slip through the system. Food fraud is going to keep happening as long as people can get away with it, says Everstine. And because supply chains are often complicated, it's almost impossible to figure out who's to blame even after the duplicity has been discovered. In his book Extra Virginity, Tom Mueller reports that U.S. marshals seized some 61,000 liters of bogus extra-virgin olive oil (it was actually mostly soybean oil) from a New Jersey warehouse in 2006. Mueller details how the U.S. company that bought it blamed the switch on the supplier, which in turn blamed it on the Italian bottlers, and in the end, no criminal charges were brought against anyone.
"It's a systemic problem," says Everstine. "It's going to take the involvement of government and industry to really get that under control." But many experts say the FDA, the agency tasked with keeping our food supply safe, is woefully underfunded and overwhelmed. "The agencies do have a role in preventing food fraud, but they are limited," says Spink. "They aren't really preventive—they're more enforcement and prosecution."
This may be changing for the better, though. The FDA now recognizes food fraud as a health threat that's as serious as dangerous drugs and faulty medical products. In a report last year, it called the harm caused by counterfeiting, fraud, and adulterations "perhaps the most serious challenge on the horizon."
Real progress is being made. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), signed into law last year, has charged the agency with building a modern, prevention-oriented safety system suited for today's globalized food supply, granting it new powers to recall products, increase inspections, and demand accountability from food companies. (Currently, no law requires that all imported foods be tested for adulteration.)
In the meantime, trade groups for frequently faked foods have been working behind the scenes to bolster consumer confidence. Since the FDA doesn't define different grades of olive oil—even though the North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA) first petitioned them to do so more than 20 years ago—the NAOOA has convinced some states, including Connecticut and California, to mandate standards so that fraudsters can be prosecuted.
The beleaguered honey industry is taking a different approach by forming a group called True Source Honey. "We built a traceability program so we could ensure honey's path from the beekeeper all the way to the consumer," says spokesperson Jill Clark. "People want to know exactly where their food comes from, and this makes the supply chain transparent." They launched the effort in January 2011 and have been working diligently to certify exporters in foreign countries as well as packers in the U.S. "The reason we started True Source Honey," says Clark, "is that we realized we can't rely on the government to fix all of our problems."
Retailers are stepping in as well. "Food fraud is absolutely on our radar," says Brianna Blanton, a brand manager for Whole Foods Market. For the products it carries exclusively or under its store brand, the company develops a testing strategy customized for the product and has members of its quality-assurance team routinely visit manufacturers they work with in order to see for themselves the products being made. "While we do trust our suppliers based on many long-standing relationships," says Blanton, "we can't go on trust alone."
New technologies—including stable isotope ratio analysis, which can determine if honey is adulterated with sugar or if "natural" fruit juice is actually reconstituted from concentrate—are on the horizon and may help crack down on such crimes. But for now, food fraud remains a frightening reality.
Illegal imports of Chinese honey may still be seeping through our borders. As recently as 2009, an estimated 80 million pounds of Chinese honey were smuggled into the country. But as government focus shifts from detection to prevention, and the FDA and retailers work together to improve quality control, increase transparency, and crack down on the criminals endangering the U.S. food supply, maybe soon, together, they'll find a way to stem the sticky tide.
RELATED: Easy Ways to Protect Yourself from Food Label Lies
Source: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/nutrition/food-additives
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