Tainted cinnamon applesauce pouches that have sickened scores of children in the U.S. may have been purposefully contaminated with lead, according to FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones.
“We’re still in the midst of our investigation. But so far all of the signals we’re getting lead to an intentional act on the part of someone in the supply chain and we’re trying to sort of figure that out,” Jones said in an exclusive interview. The pouches found to be contaminated were sold under three brands — Weis, WanaBana and Schnucks — that are all linked to a manufacturing facility in Ecuador. The FDA says it’s conducting an inspection of that facility.
“My instinct is they didn’t think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,” Jones said. “They thought it was going to end up in places that did not have the ability to detect something like this.”
I read the article. Is this because lead has a sweet, appealing flavor? I remember reading this was a huge problem at certain times and places.
Yeah, this wasn’t someone with a grudge against children poisoning their food, this was an willfully negligent decision made by the producers to make the product more profitable
We used to put fucking formaldehyde in milk for infants
Lead(II,IV) Oxide (aka red lead) is sometimes used to color low-quality cinnamon to look better. Much like yellow led is sometimes used to color turmeric. Toxic, of course, but profitable!
Is there a way that someone can test for this at home? It seems troubling that children had to be poisoned before any action was taken.