Be careful on what you eat, HVP alert!

**Update** :  Here is the list of the HVP Salmonella Tainted Foods >>

A large batch of the flavor enhancer known as hydrolyzed vegetable protein or HVP, supplied by Basic Food Flavors, a North Las Vegas food ingredient company, was found to be laced with salmonella. Thus far, over one hundred products containing the ingredient have been recalled in both the U.S. and Canada. The company produces about 20 million pounds of the food additive annually.

Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, the advocacy group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, told Bloomberg that this case may trigger the recall of as many as 10,000 products. To be sure, HVP is used in virtually everything that is packaged or canned — 10,000 products may be a conservative estimate.

Canwest News reports that in Canada, consumers could be exposed to the contaminated batch through imported pre-packaged foods or items manufactured north of the border using the ingredient.

Michael Armstrong, a quality management specialist at Brock University’s faculty of business said this case is particularly challenging because the raw material is likely considered a generic commodity. This means a food manufacturer might buy HVP from many different suppliers over time, wherever it is cheapest, and store it all together without establishing an efficient trace-back system to a particular source or batch. “It’s the kind of ingredient that’s the hardest to trace,” said Armstrong.

The FDA claims they began discussions with Basic Food Flavors regarding the firm’s intentions to conduct a voluntary recall of the HVP the company had made on or after September 17. On Feb. 26, 2010, Basic Food Flavors began notifying its customers that it was recalling all of the HVP product made since September 17.

On March 4, 2010, Basic Food Flavors — who offers the food industry 120 varieties of hydrolyzed vegetable protein or HVP — announced a recall of its entire production dating to September 17, 2009. The Food and Drug Administration is continuously updating the recall list at www.foodsafety.gov.

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) is an MSG-like flavor enhancer that is mixed in with other spices, and added to thousands of processed foods, including chips, dip mixes, salad dressings, sauces, hotdogs, soups, frozen dinners, bouillons, gravy mixes, snacks, and ready-to-eat foods. And unless HVP is part of a flavor mix, HVP may not be listed as an ingredient on a food package.

Among some of the brand name items recalled are Quaker Crispy Minis rice cakes in tomato and basil, Family’s Best smokey bacon potato chips, Healthwise Cream of Mushroom Soup, two flavors of Pringles potato crips, kettle-style chips, and honey mustard/onion pretzels. According to Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anna Taylor, Wal-Mart’s Great Value Ranch Chip Dip, manufactured by T. Marzetti Co. of Columbus, Ohio, has been pulled from their shelves.

Two most recently added items are 1.7 million pounds of ready-to-eat beef taquito and chicken quesadilla products from a Houston firm, and 115,700 pounds of Tornados Ranchero Beef & Cheese roll-ups, made by Ruiz Foods of Denison, Texas.

Bloomberg reports that PepsiCo Inc. voluntarily recalled about 275,000 packages of Quaker Snack Mix Baked Cheddar in the U.S. And PepsiCo has joined Procter & Gamble Co., Nestle SA and McCormick & Co. in recalling products that contained HVPthe flavor protein, says Bloomberg.

“It’s a wake-up call for the food industry as a whole to be more thorough in evaluating the safety of ingredients,” said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. “Big companies are putting their trust in suppliers, which is their Achilles heel.”

Dan Flynn with Food Safely News claims the food ingredient company responsible, Basic Food Flavors, relocated to North Las Vegas after encountering too many regulatory obstacles in Pomona, California.

According to FDA inspection records, managers at Basic Food Flavors in Las Vegas learned on Jan. 21st that samples taken a week earlier from their Nevada facility tested positive for salmonella, but they continued shipping their product to foodmakers anyway.

The Washington Post reports Basic Food Flavors tested surfaces near food-processing equipment throughout its plant twice in January and once in February, and each time the samples showed salmonella contamination. The company continued to ship products and to make more HVP without cleaning the plant or the equipment in a way that would have minimized contamination, the FDA records said.

“The contamination is believed to date to September 2009, meaning millions of pounds of potentially tainted HVP — all of which the company has recalled — was shipped in bulk to foodmakers over five months. Many of those companies then sold their products to other clients, complicating the distribution chain and making it hard for federal officials to gauge the scope of the problem.”

FDA spokeswoman Meghan Scott says “The FDA is reviewing the evidence in association with the current inspection of Basic Food Flavors to determine the appropriate regulatory response.”

**Update** :  Here is the list of the HVP Salmonella Tainted Foods >>

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