ASK NOT
"ARE THERE
BUGS IN
MY FOOD?"
ASK
"HOW MANY
BUGS ARE IN
MY FOOD?"
ABOUT BUGS IN YOUR FOOD
Did you know that the FDA has an approved "food defect list" which cites The following article is NOT for the squeamish!
how many bug and vermin parts are allowed in what we eat?
Bug heads, rat hairs--bon appétit
Do you know how many insect parts are allowed in your Fig Newton?
By Mary Roach
If you made Fig Newtons for a living and you wanted to know how many insects could get into your Newtons without your getting into hot water with the FDA, you could look it up on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Food Defect Action Levels Web site . Here you would learn that fig paste is allowed to have up to 13 insect heads per 100 grams.
You would then become sidetracked and further learn that approximately four rodent hairs are allowed in a jar of peanut butter, that an average of 60 thrips are allowed in 100 grams of frozen broccoli, that 10 grams of hops are allowed to contain 2,500 aphids and that 5 milligrams of rat excreta in a pound of sesame seeds is A-OK with the FDA.
Article continued here:
http://archive.salon.com/health/col/roac/2000/01/14/filth_lab/print.html
ForPDFofFDA article, click here.
For PDF of Salon article, click here.
