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[George Holcombe]

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The Maggots in Your Mushrooms
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By E. J. LEVY
Published: February 12, 2009
THE Georgia peanut company at the center of one of our nation’s worst  
food-contamination scares has officially reached a revolting new low:  
a recent inspection by the Food and Drug Administration discovered  
that the salmonella-tainted plant was also home to mold and roaches.

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Jason Logan
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Times Topics: Food and Drug Administration | Peanut Butter

You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new.  
The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural  
contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs,  
mold, rodent hairs and maggots.

In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect  
Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That  
Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food  
Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such  
“defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,”  
“rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,”  
“mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say,  
maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila  
fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign  
matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones,  
burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100  
grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs  
and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are  
allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15  
or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100  
grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more  
maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms  
and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking  
action by the F.D.A.

The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when  
washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you  
might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500  
plant lice. Yum.

Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one’s food, curry powder  
is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925  
insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts  
per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20  
rodent hairs before being considered defective.

Peanut butter — that culinary cause célèbre — may contain  
approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more  
rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.

In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of  
flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of  
insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may  
well be in the mustard.

The F.D.A. considers the significance of these defects to be  
“aesthetic” or “offensive to the senses,” which is to say, merely icky  
as opposed to the “mouth/tooth injury” one risks with, for example,  
insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic  
grounds, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process  
raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally  
occurring, unavoidable defects.”

The most recent edition of the booklet (it has been revised and edited  
six times since first being issued in May 1995) states that “the  
defect levels do not represent an average of the defects that occur in  
any of the products — the averages are actually much lower.” Instead,  
it says, “The levels represent limits at which F.D.A. will regard the  
food product ‘adulterated’ and subject to enforcement action.”

Bugs in our food may not be so bad — many people in the world practice  
entomophagy — but these harmless hazards are a reminder of the less  
harmless risks we run with casual regulation of our food supply. For  
good reason, the F.D.A. is focused on peanut butter, which the agency  
is considering reclassifying as high risk, like seafood, and  
subjecting it to special safety regulations. But the unsettling  
reality is that despite food’s cheery packaging and nutritional  
labeling, we don’t really know what we’re putting into our mouths.

Soup merits little mention among the products listed in the F.D.A.’s  
booklet. But, given the acceptable levels for contaminants in other  
foods, one imagines that the disgruntled diner’s cri de coeur —  
“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” — would be, to the F.D.A., no  
cause for complaint.

E. J. Levy is a professor of creative writing at the University of  
Missouri.

Next Article in Opinion (3 of 30) »A version of this article appeared  
in print on February 13, 2009, on page A31 of the New York edition.
Past Coverage
Peanut Case Shows Holes in Safety Net (February 9, 2009)
Spinach and Peanuts, With a Dash of Radiation (February 2, 2009)
Peanut Plant Recall Leads To Criminal Investigation (January 31, 2009)
New Look at Food Safety After Peanut Tainting (January 30, 2009)
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George Holcombe
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