Botulism in Organic Carrot Juice
8 Oct 2006 in Regulatory Science
More problems for Earthbound Farms and its parent company Natural Selection Foods. Now its organic carrot juice has been identified as the culprit in an outbreak of botulism.
In a Page One story, Monterey County Herald reporter Julia Reynolds says organic carrot juice produced by Bolthouse Farms and sold under the Earthbound Farms label has been linked to four cases of botulism type A in Georgia and Florida. The Centers for Disease Control issued an advisory on September 16, about three weeks before the news account.
Botulism is caused by Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that as it grows forms spores that are a potent neurotoxin. Says the Food and Drug Administration:
Foodborne botulism ... is a severe type of food poisoning caused by the ingestion of foods containing the potent neurotoxin formed during growth of the organism. The toxin is heat labile and can be destroyed if heated at 80°C for 10 minutes or longer. The incidence of the disease is low, but the disease is of considerable concern because of its high mortality rate if not treated immediately and properly. Most of the 10 to 30 outbreaks that are reported annually in the United States are associated with inadequately processed, home-canned foods, but occasionally commercially produced foods have been involved in outbreaks. Sausages, meat products, canned vegetables and seafood products have been the most frequent vehicles for human botulism.A few nanograms (i.e., billionths of a gram) are sufficient to cause infection.The organism and its spores are widely distributed in nature. They occur in both cultivated and forest soils, bottom sediments of streams, lakes, and coastal waters, and in the intestinal tracts of fish and mammals, and in the gills and viscera of crabs and other shellfish.
CDC's advisory warns of the problem of "temperature abuse," which in plain English means failing to maintain proper refrigeration of perishable food:
Reynolds quotes an unnamed FDA spokesman saying, "This was very likely due to temperature abuse," which would have facilitated the growth of Clostridium botulinum spores, which can survive pasteurization. Natural Selection Foods' spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluma agrees that this was the most likely cause.The incident highlights the potential consequences to corporate reputation of labeling agreements in which companies like Natural Selection Foods licenses their names for use by other firms. To protect its brand name, Natural Selection Foods must aggressively monitor Bolthouse Farms' performance. Presumably, both Natural Selection Foods and Bolthouse Farms benefit from this arrangement.
That said, it doesn't mean that the two firms have identical interests or that they will simply reinforce each other's messages. Presumably their contract carefully allocates liabilities for such things as foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls. For that reason, it is not at all surprising that Cabaluma would take the position that Bolthouse Farms is the responsible party.
