Skeptic March 2020

Problem solved? Well, yes and no. The meat industry hurried

to clean up its act. Food fraud was severely reduced. Today,

hundreds of millions of Americans eat safe, clean food every

day—and they usually get what they pay for. However, food

fraud was never completely eliminated. Even now, food fakery

remains surprisingly common. How can that be?

Limits of Food Regulation

Food laws are never perfect, and even the best

laws have down sides. Bold and clever crooks still

find ways to cheat.

Some laws are just too weak. If food is

rarely inspected, or if punishments are

small or rarely enforced, it just doesn’t

matter what the laws say. Swindlers will

ignore the rules.

On the other hand, inspections and law

enforcement cost money. In the end, those

costs are always paid by customers or taxpay-

ers. It would be far too expensive for any

society to test allof the food on the market.

Government food agencies must make deci-

sions about which foods to inspect and how

often. Naturally, they pay more attention to

deadly risks like accidental contamination of

meat with bacteria. Simple cheating is a lower

priority. Foods that are inspected less often

are more likely to be faked, even today.

Also, some food fraud is really hard to

detect. Accum knew 200 years ago that food

fraud is a scientific arms race. Dishonest

food scientists constantly invent sophisti-

cated new ways to fool people; honest

scientists constantly invent new tech-

niques to detect fraud. Unfortunately,

food fakery is a huge global industry with

billions of dollars to spend. Catching that

fakery often takes expensive and diicult

scientific research.

Food Laws Can Make Some Things Worse

Strangely enough, food laws can themselves mislead

customers. First, the existence of laws may fool people into

thinking food fraud no longer happens. People are much

easier to swindle when they aren’t paying attention.

Also, food laws are usually a compromise between law-

makers and the food industry. This makes sense. As England’s

food adulteration committee reported in 1856, “The great

diiculty of legislating on this subject lies in putting an end

to the liberty of fraud without afecting the freedom of

commerce.” It’s good to protect the public from scams. At

the same time, sensible food laws should allow businesses

to make money producing safe, tasty, nutritious foods that

the public can actually aford. That means listening to the

concerns of food producers too.

But compromise laws can sometimes mislead people. In

2016, for example, the Coca-Cola company won a long court

battle defending the name of its Minute Maid brand Pome-

granate Blueberry 100% Fruit Juice Blend. The company

was sued because the product (not shown) actually

contained less than one percentpomegranate juice! It

was almost entirely apple and grape juice with a

misleading name and label. Even U.S. Supreme

Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was fooled,

saying “I thought that this was pomegranate

juice.” But Coca-Cola won the case because

the label did comply with U.S. Food and

Drug Adminstration (FDA) rules at the time.

(After “Pomegranate Blueberry...” the label

continued “...flavored blend of five juices”

in smaller letters.)

Laws also require definitions. Consider

this: what is a “lobster”? Most people would

think of the familiar Maine lobster with big

claws. But what about other similar species?

The FDA allows two species to be called

“lobster,” and numerous others to be called

“spiny lobster” or “slipper lobster.” In 2005,

the FDA agreed with the food industry’s

requests to call some much cheaper species

of smaller animals “Langostino lobster.”

Restaurant chains then deceptively shortened

that name to “lobster,” even though

langostinos are not part of the lobster

family at all!

Other claims surprisingly have no legal

definition. “Natural” food claims have

been popular for half a century. Grocery

shoppers may assume that food products

“couldn’t say that if it weren’t true,” but

the FDA never got around to defining

the term “natural.” When used in most

food claims and names, “natural” means whatever a food

company wants it to mean—which is to say, anything or

nothing. It’s just something that sounds good, like “Zany!”

or “Fantastic!”

Sometimes the food industry even uses anti-fraud

arguments as an excuse to convince lawmakers to pass unfair

laws against competitors. For example, the butter industry

convinced some U.S. states that yellow margarine was basi-

cally just fraudulent fake butter. For decades, it was illegal to

sell yellow-colored margarine in those states. (Yellow mar-

garine remained illegal in Quebec, Canada until 2008.)

JUNIOR SKEPTIC No. 54 (3232)

71

Imperfect Solutions

Label says

“Blueberry”

Fine print

Picture shows

Blueberries

Read labels carefully!This

Canadian product looks like

100% blueberry juice, but the

fine print says “blend of fruit

juices.” The main ingredients

are actually “apple and/or

Pear” juice and thenblueberry

juice for flavor.