Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Food Alert - Filthy, pesticide & Salmonella contaminated groceries from India.

You'll be surprised to find many food items that we regularly buy from Indian grocery in the FDA's list of Import Refusal Report and Detention Without Physical Examination List. Check out the list before you go shopping next time.

The contamination ranges from being filthy and unfit for consumption to banned ingredients, pesticides, salmonella etc.

What is in the list? .... everything you can think of from unbranded spices, rice, sweets, sauce many of which are from the likes of Britannia,
Haldiram, Priya, Kohinoor etc.

Refusal Actions by FDA as Recorded in OASIS for India:
Introduction - www.fda.gov/ora/oasis/ora_oasis_ref_intro.html
Dec 2007 - www.fda.gov/ora/oasis/12/ora_oasis_c_in.html
Monthly updates by country - www.fda.gov/ora/oasis/ora_oasis_ref.html

Detention Without Physical Examination of Processed Products For Pesticides:
www.fda.gov/ora/fiars/ora_import_ia9908.html

What is DETENTION WITHOUT PHYSICAL EXAMINATION?
In some instances a product may be detained as soon as it is offered for entry into the United States. This procedure is the administrative act of detaining a product without physical examination and is based on past history and/or other information indicating the product may be violative. A product may be subject to a detention without physical examination (DWPE) recommendation until the shipper or importer proves that the product meets FDA guidelines or standards.
Occasionally, FDA identifies products from an entire country or geographic region for DWPE when the violative conditions appear to be geographically widespread. Detention recommendations of this breadth are rare and are initiated only after other avenues for resolving the problem have been exhausted. (See FDA Regulatory Procedures Manual (RPM), Chapter 9-25-00 for details on Detention Without Physical Examination - formerly known as Automatic Detention).

What is IMPORT REFUSAL REPORT (IRR)?
The IRR reports on those products for which the that determination was to refuse admission to the product. The IRR is generated from data collected by FDA's Operational and Administrative System for Import Support (OASIS) and is updated monthly. Each month, the IRR is available sorted by country and by product based on the industry code which is the first two characters of FDA's product code (e.g., all fishery/seafood products will be coded 16...).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good article! Didn't realize that so many products and exclusive list of companies are under scrutiny,..