Maggots in Your Mushrooms: Contamination is Rampant in our Food Supply

Insect filth. Rodent filth. Parasites. Mildew. Cigarette butts. Mammalian excreta. These are just a handful of the revolting things that are currently named as “allowable defects” in an FDA booklet entitled “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans”. The very booklet that food producers use to determine just how much they can let slide.

All of a sudden, after the news about the Georgia peanut plant that sickened thousands with salmonella – which was also home to mold and roaches – people are starting to pay attention to how our food is made and what’s in it. Better late than never, I guess – but the details of how much is actually passable by federal law will sicken you.

From The New York Times:

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking action by the F.D.A.

The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.

Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one’s food, curry powder is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925 insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20 rodent hairs before being considered defective.

The New York Times estimates that every year, you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites without realizing it. The FDA permits all of this because, in their words, it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

If that doesn’t make you want to start growing produce and making your meals from scratch, nothing will. Of course, it’s still virtually impossible to avoid ingesting gross stuff every now and then, even if you do – we live in a world covered in bugs, germs, feces and animal dander. Still,  all of this really makes it clear how far removed we are from the production of the food we eat.

One thing is clear: you can’t trust the government to keep rodent hairs out of your cinnamon and insect guts out of your peanut butter. Our choice is basically to take total control over our own food in any way we can, or get used to the idea of eating nasty crap.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user jmichaeli

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