Permissible filth

Few recent government actions have provoked such vocal anguish and anger from housewives as the Food and Drug Administration’s disclosure earlier this year that it tolerates a certain amount of filth in food. The previously secret inventory of extraneous matter, traces of which the FDA considers “unavoidable,” reads like a recipe for a witches’ pot-au-feu: rodent hair and droppings; the eggs, larvae and bodily parts of insects; cysts, mold fibers and assorted rot.

Mary Ann Ferrara of Lanham, Maryland, summed up the feelings of many. “I would like to voice my astonishment that the FDA allows a certain amount of filth to be processed in the foods we buy,” she wrote the FDA. “I can’t believe that anyone in his right mind would pass on to the public even the least little amount of insects, hair or whatever.”

Linda Garrison of Red Bay, Alabama, had some plaintive questions: “Is there any way that I, as a concerned homemaker, can be certain of what I’m buying? Are there any brand names that have strict sanitary codes?” Bernice Ruskin of Baltimore insisted, “There is no reason for this state of affairs to continue when we possess the knowledge and technology to eliminate such a problem. The public should be entitled to more stringent, enforceable regulations set by the FDA.”

The source of all this understandable domestic agitation is a fact of life quite familiar to farmers, food processors and FDA officials. Perfect purity in foods, even with the most modern technology, is not attainable. “As long as you’re working with agricultural products,” says Howard Bauman, a vice president of Pillsbury Co., “there is no way to totally eliminate microscopic defects.”

One attempt at perfection was made in preparation for the first space flights, Bauman recalls. “The processors were absolutely sure of the quality of the foods. We knew everything from the name of the fishing boat to the latitude and longitude where it caught the fish.” In those days it cost NASA $300 to $400 a day to feed an astronaut; yet Bauman says, “I’m sure that despite all the checking there were still microscopic traces of defects in the space food.”

Because absolute purity is an elusive goal, the FDA has been setting standards since 1911 for how much microscopic contamination should be tolerated. The agency assures consumers that its tolerances pose no hazard to health. “Of course, insects and rodents are known disease carriers, and, historically, man has always abhorred them,” acknowledges Virgil 0. Wodicka, director of the FDA Bureau of Foods. But he hastens to add, “There is only the remotest chance of getting a disease from part of a beetle wing or a rodent hair in processed foods when such defects exist in very small quantities.”

How insect parts and other debris get into foods is something any farm boy knows. Consider bread, the staff of life. When wheat comes threshed from the field, the grain is mixed with weevils, grasshoppers, rabbit hair and even bits of mice or garter snakes.

Weevil snout found in flour

“At harvest time wheat is piled in town squares out West,” explains Howard Bauman of Pillsbury, “and then it may be stored for a year or two, with the inevitable exposure to mice and insects.” Wheat also spends time in warehouses and boxcars before reaching the flour mill, the bakery and, at length, the consumer. According to Daniel G. McPherson, head of quality control at General Mills, sanitary conditions have deteriorated somewhat along this route despite millions of dollars spent annually by big packers to monitor the cleanliness of their plants and suppliers.

Moth leg found in almonds

Before being milled into flour, wheat is washed or scoured, screened, blown by air jets and even X-rayed for the presence of the confused flour beetle (so named because it never walks a straight line). The resultant flour, Howard Bauman says, is “a thousand times cleaner than FDA’s standard for wheat.” Microscopic analysis nevertheless may yield clues to the flour’s natural history; the FDA’s close examination of various foods turned up the insect fragments shown in the accompanying photos.

Not all the filth in food gets there before the manufacturing stage. Some can be traced to inferior sanitation in the factory. In a recent random survey of food plants in 21 states, the government’s General Accounting Office found unsanitary conditions in four plants out of ten. Although dirty factories won’t pass FDA inspection, a certain amount of factory-originated filth is not in itself ground for FDA action.

Most manufacturers try to keep their products far below FDA maximum tolerances. The FDA accepts, for instance, one rodent pellet per pint of wheat and 1% by weight of insect damaged kernels. Says Daniel McPherson of General Mills: “We couldn’t make Wheaties out of flour that dirty.”

Food processors have improved their sanitation techniques so much that the FDA standards may be outmoded for many categories of food. Take apple butter. Because it used to be made with dried apple chips, which were subject to rodent infestation, the FDA set a limit of eight rodent hairs per 100 grams (3.5 ounces). Processors now use fresh whole apples. “Since mice don’t climb trees much,” says Douglas Thompson, a plant manager for J.M. Smucker Co., “we don’t have a rodent hair problem any more.”

Peanut butter manufacturers can also better the FDA standards by a long shot. As many as 50 insect fragments or two rodent hairs are allowed per 3.5 ounce sample, but, says John J. Calhoun, Smucker’s peanut expert, “I would guess that 98% of the peanut butter on the market is free of contaminants.”

Other categories of food are not so cleanable. Harry Beerbohm, quality assurance director for Del Monte Corp., says flatly, “There has always been mold on ripe tomatoes, and no amount of washing is going to remove every trace of it.”

Despite tenacious pests, most processed food is much cleaner than it has to be to meet federal standards. Virgil Wodicka has cautioned consumers against jumping to the conclusion that their food actually contains as much filth as is legally allowed. In practice, he says, those levels are very rarely seen in laboratory inspections.

Readers are invited to pass along accounts of their own misfortunes with consumer products and services. Complaints of national interest will be the starting point for future reports in this series. Write The Angry Consumer, Money, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York. N. Y. 10020.