Tainted cinnamon applesauce pouches that have sickened scores of children in the U.S. may have been purposefully contaminated with lead, according to FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones.

“We’re still in the midst of our investigation. But so far all of the signals we’re getting lead to an intentional act on the part of someone in the supply chain and we’re trying to sort of figure that out,” Jones said in an exclusive interview. The pouches found to be contaminated were sold under three brands — Weis, WanaBana and Schnucks — that are all linked to a manufacturing facility in Ecuador. The FDA says it’s conducting an inspection of that facility.

“My instinct is they didn’t think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,” Jones said. “They thought it was going to end up in places that did not have the ability to detect something like this.”

    • @Crow
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      811 months ago

      Lead is organic.

      • Flying Squid
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        511 months ago

        Organic = contains carbon. Lead, as a base metal, does not contain carbon. So lead is definitively not organic.

        The problem is, all that food that isn’t labeled as organic? It is organic. Which is why that label is really fucking stupid.

        • @Crow
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          411 months ago

          That’s organic chemistry which is very different from the definition of organic food.

            • @[email protected]
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              211 months ago

              I mean we’d been using organic and synthetic in that context for decades so it was a fairly obvious choice really. I think a lot of math focused people don’t really understand the complexity of the English language, or any language really, there isn’t a singular definition, defined space, or underlying principal for words they get their meaning from usage and context.

              Aliens won’t have derived the same words as us but they will have determined the same relationships between 0, 1, 2, etc - organic food is just a word for a grouping that people needed a shorthand to refer to.

    • @Garbanzo
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      011 months ago

      I can’t believe any parent would walk right past the organic/local section at the dollar store and pick up lead pouches instead, but here we are.

    • @[email protected]
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      011 months ago

      Or avoid processed foods and just eat plain apples. If you can. Sometimes they’re hard as rocks.