When do we just say "no"? (and mean it?):
"Food" & ideas for thought.... 
You are here ~~> Topics ~~> Food for Thought

Foodborne Diseases: In China, a National Food Contamination Monitoring and Foodborne Disease Surveillance System has been established since 2001; there are more than 70 surveillance points among 13 provinces in China, but they cover only about 643 million people. (source)

When I began researching the ingredients for Twinkies, I naively thought that their raw materials were extracted from nuts, beans, fruit, seeds or leaves, and that they came from the United States. I was looking to link places with foods — along the lines of California wine or Maine lobster, but for thiamine mononitrate. It turned out that I was way off.  Although eight of the ingredients in the beloved little snack cake come from domestic corn and three from soybeans, there are others — including thiamine mononitrate — that come from petroleum. Chinese petroleum. Chinese refineries and Chinese factories. And there are other unexpected ingredients that are much harder to trace. So much for the great “All-American” snack food. 
~~~ Make sure to read this entire article HERE!

A federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida returned guilty verdicts Oct. 18 against Sigma International Inc.; its vice president, William Andrew Walton, 47; plant manager Charles Sternisha, 64; and head salesman, international division, Robert Fields, 34; on a variety of federal crimes involving FDA and U.S. Customs fraud. They were found guilty of conspiring to import shrimp from India using false entry documents and false labeling to avoid compulsory product testing, of obstructing justice, and of adulterating and selling tainted shrimp.

Two other indicted defendants, Yaw Bin "Tony" Huang, owner of Sigma, and Geogy Kannikal, Sigma's purchase agent in India, remain fugitives in India and east Asia. A sixth defendant, Jagadeesh Reddy, was acquitted of charges against him.

During a 10-week trial, the government proved that Sigma had chemically treated the decomposed Chinese shrimp with a solution of chlorine and copper sulfate and then, with some success, passed it off to customers as "fresh frozen." It also showed that the firm imported frozen shrimp from unapproved packers in India. FDA places shipments from unapproved manufacturers on automatic detention, prohibiting the shipments' entry into the country until the shipper or importer proves the product meets FDA standards. Sigma used false invoices with the names of approved packers to avoid detention.

For three years, FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) and the U.S. Customs Service collected evidence to bring the defendants to trial. "Chemists and experts in the shrimp business were flown in from India and England to testify for the government," said OCI agent Rande Matteson. He noted that Sigma spent more than $1 million for its defense.

The investigation was prompted by a routine FDA inspection of imported shrimp in Tampa, Fla., in October 1991. Norman Harvey, an investigator with FDA's Tampa resident post, noticed that the labels on cartons of shrimp imported from India identifying the packer had been altered or removed. Other cartons from the same shipment had labels from unapproved packers. Further checking revealed that the invoice submitted for the shipment listed the name of an approved packer. Examination of other entry documents showed discrepancies indicating that the invoice and India's Certificate of Health had been altered.

Harvey then notified the Customs Service about the problem and told inspectors that another shipment was scheduled to arrive in November. Harvey and a Customs Service inspector examined cartons from the November shipment and found the same kinds of discrepancies.

"Shrimp can be purchased from unapproved packers at rock-bottom prices and sold as legitimate product for handsome profits," Matteson explained. FDA's review of documents later showed that Sigma had imported more than 50 shipments of shrimp with false labels over a two- to three-year period.

The U.S. Customs Service initiated a criminal investigation, and customs agent Robert Siberski called Matteson to enlist OCI's collaboration. In December 1992, FDA and the Customs Service executed a search warrant of Sigma's business premises and subpoenaed letters of credit from the Los Angeles branch of a Taiwanese bank Sigma used to purchase its shrimp from India. The search turned up evidence that included correspondence in which Sigma's vice president, Walton, instructed Kannikal, the firm's purchasing agent in India, to falsify invoices and other documents to avoid automatic detention of the shipment. Copies of invoices in the bank's letter of credit files showed the shrimp was processed and packed by an unapproved packer, while the invoices Sigma submitted to FDA and the Customs Service showed the name of an approved packer.

In addition, Matteson said, "We found many handwritten notes by Walton instructing Kannikal to get doctored paperwork to present to the Customs Service and FDA showing that the shrimp came from an approved packer." At one point, Walton sent a message to Huang, Sigma's owner, apparently warning him that a U.S. firm in the New York-New Jersey area had been charged with importing shrimp from unapproved packers. That message, Matteson said, established that they both knew and were concerned that the Customs Service and FDA scrutinized shrimp from unapproved packers.

A review of additional records corroborated other evidence that Sigma engaged in a dual invoicing scheme, using false invoices to fraudulently bring the shrimp from India into the United States.

In December 1994, Jean Peoples, a consumer safety inspector in FDA's Tampa resident post, told Matteson that during a routine inspection of a cold storage facility, she walked by a pallet of frozen shrimp imported by Sigma from China and could smell it was rotten.

"She recalled that she and investigator Harvey told Sigma officials that they wanted to sample shrimp from those pallets," Matteson said, "and Sigma's traffic manager became very upset." FDA collected and sampled the shrimp, nevertheless, and laboratory results indicated the shrimp contained levels of class 2 and 3 decomposition. "That means it's not fit for human consumption," Matteson said.

The next month, a storage facility employee told Peoples that one of Sigma's buyers had rejected shrimp Sigma imported from China because it was rotten. Huang, Walton and Sternisha, Sigma's plant manager, decided to bring the rejected lots stored in all of their cold storage facilities to their plant at St. Petersburg and see if any of the shrimp could be salvaged.

"They had so much returned shrimp that the freezers were busting at the seams," Matteson said. "Then they hatched the idea to dump the bad shrimp into vats containing a mix of chlorine, lemon juice, trisodium phosphate, water, and a product containing copper sulfate." Sigma concocted this chemical treatment to get rid of the odor and reduce the amount of indoles (chemicals released by decomposition), he said.

Investigators later learned that Sigma had aluminum freezer trays custom-built so that the refrozen shrimp would fit the original cartons from China. But they found that the frozen blocks of shrimp stuck to the aluminum, so Huang arranged for plastic trays to be sent by air from China. They then refroze the shrimp and repacked them in the original cartons.

To keep its inventory straight, investigators later learned, Sigma stamped a 7000 or 8000 series on the boxes. The 7000 series indicated products that had been rejected by the buyer, then washed by Sigma and OK'd for its standards. Sigma would then send the shrimp back to the same buyers that had rejected it, as well as to others.

"But one of the buyers had ink-stamped numbers on its boxes before it returned them to Sigma, and the company noticed the same ink stamps on the boxes of shrimp they got back from Sigma," Matteson said. "Company officials questioned Sigma about the stamps and were told that only good product salvaged from the lots was returned to them." The company accepted Sigma's explanation and kept the shrimp.

The 8000 series was rejected shrimp that had been treated and deemed unacceptable by Sigma's standards. Sigma sold this product to a Virginia Beach processor, which in turn sold it to the public.

On Feb. 23, 1995, after obtaining a second search warrant, Matteson, along with a team of OCI, Customs Service, and State of Florida Department of Agriculture Food Safety agents, went to Sigma and found employees washing the shrimp in the chemical mix. The agents also found chemicals and more than 100,000 documents indicating that Sigma had imported frozen shrimp from unapproved packers in India, refunded money to distributors for bad shrimp, and treated shrimp with chemicals. With additional search warrants, the government also obtained and examined documents indicating that Sigma had taken measures to influence witnesses in India and to create additional false documents in an effort to obstruct the government's investigation.

They also found computerized inventory records with notations such as "rejected by" and the name of the company following. Matteson interviewed officials from these companies, and when told that the shrimp they received had been treated with chemicals or previously rejected, the officials said that had they known, they would not have bought it.

FDA laboratory analyses of sampled shrimp again showed high levels of indole. At FDA's request, the State of Florida put a stop-sale notice on all of Sigma's products.

FDA and the Customs Service presented the evidence to a grand jury, which indicted the corporation and the six executives in September 1995.

In February 1996, agents Matteson and Siberski and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Rubenstein went to India to interview Kannikal. However, an injunction had been filed in India prohibiting the U.S. government from taking depositions from Kannikal or other witnesses.

After hiring attorneys to challenge the injunction, they finally were able to depose one witness, P.P. Makkar. Makkar, an approved packer whose company's name Sigma had used, attested that he had not packed the shipments in question.

In July, defense attorneys claimed they had a witness in India who they wanted to depose. So, Siberski and assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis Moore returned to India to take the deposition from the defense witness, who was a competitor of Makkar.

The witness attested that his company had processed and packed the shrimp in question but that a supervisor from Makkar's company had been present during the processing and packing, and therefore Makkar's company name could legally be represented as the packer and processor. Indian officials called as witnesses for the prosecution, however, dispelled the contention that this was legal practice in their country.

Another deception revealed at the trial related to the 8000 series of shrimp that Sigma had rejected under its own standards, yet sold to a processor in Virginia Beach, Va. In his opening statement for the defense, Sigma's attorney said it was a mistake that the 8000 product got out but that the firm got all of it back from the processor. The defense presented credit invoices and returned checks attesting to this, and Sigma's head salesman, Robert Fields, testified that it was all true and accurate.

However, FDA's Matteson knew this was not true, and at his recommendation, the prosecution arranged for the vice president of the Virginia Beach firm to testify at the trial. He told the court that in April 1995--several months after FDA and the Customs Service had searched Sigma's warehouse--Fields called, asking the vice president to return the product but didn't tell him why. When the vice president told Fields he had already sold the shrimp, Fields said to send something that looked like the original product, and so the vice president sold back other shrimp to Sigma.

At press time, the firm and the three executives were expected to be sentenced in March 1997. Sigma is still in business but prohibited from selling shrimp.

--Marian Segal (FDA Investigators Reports - 1997)

China is the world's most populous country with about 1.3 billion people—20 percent of the Earth's population. Population is 1,303,701,000; the capital's (Beijing) population is 10,849,000O.  Occupying most of East Asia, it is the fourth largest country in area (after Russia, Canada, and the U.S.).  Area is 3,705,405 square miles, life expectancy is 71 and the GDP per Capita is $4,700 (USD $); literacy percentage is 86%. 

Comparing this to the United States, population is 296,483,000; the capital's (Washington, DC) population is 4,190,000.  The U.S. has an area of 3,794,083 square miles, life expectancy is 77, and the GDP per Capita is $36,300 (USD $); literacy percentage is 97% (source: National Geographic).

This site is © Copyright PDL 2008, All Rights Reserved
Steve's free web templates