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.”
as much as having overwhelmed hospitals is an indication of a thriving healthcare system… it would be better to have less recalls and better regulation of products to market, and similarly better to have affordable preventative healthcare to keep people out of hospitals in the first place.
Ah, so you would want the FDA to have broader powers and scope to reach into companies to do more preventative maintenance. Yeah, that would probably help.
Just more inspections of the supply chain. The FDA is very reactive.
Yes exactly. Maybe not more scope, but more exercise of their current powers.