Pepsi Finds Traces of the Fungicide Carbendazim in Orange Juice

The company said in a statement on Saturday it was conducting additional tests after the Food and Drug Administration announced on Wednesday that it would temporarily halt orange juice imports and remove any juice found to have dangerous amounts of the fungicide carbendazim.

Jan 16 2012 --- PepsiCo Inc said company tests of its Tropicana orange juice showed low levels of the potentially dangerous fungicide carbendazim. But the company stressed that levels were below federal safety concerns and did not pose a health risk.

The company released a statement on Saturday saying it was conducting additional tests after the Food and Drug Administration announced on Wednesday that it is testing all orange juice and orange juice concentrate shipments as well as products at domestic manufacturers. But, for now, the regulating agency says "consumers can be confident that the orange juice in their refrigerators is safe."

The company said in a statement on Saturday it was conducting additional tests after the Food and Drug Administration announced on Wednesday that it would temporarily halt orange juice imports and remove any juice found to have dangerous amounts of the fungicide carbendazim.

The scare was triggered when soft-drink giant Coca-Cola Co, maker of Minute Maid orange juice, said it had discovered carbendazim in shipments from Brazil and alerted U.S. authorities about a potential industry-wide problem.

Last month, Coca-Cola alerted the FDA that it detected low levels of a fungicide in its own and in competitors' orange juice and in juice concentrates from Brazil following routine tests.

As a precautionary measure, the FDA has halted imports of orange juice and orange juice concentrates from all over the world, and is testing each shipment for the fungicide carbendazim. The FDA said it will deny entry of any imported orange juice products that test at 10 parts per billion or higher for carbendazim, which is still a very low level.

The consulting firm FDAImports noted that the FDA is implementing a “test and hold” policy for all imported shipments of orange juice to determine if they contain carbendazim (a fungicide, also called “MBC”). Under the law, a food cannot contain a pesticide residue unless the residue has an established tolerance level for that specific food. The firm stressed that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not established a tolerance level for carbendazim residues in orange juice. The sudden crackdown on orange juice in particular highlights the questionable way that FDA and the EPA regulate pesticides in foods. Carbendazim is now at the forefront of FDA’s attention because EPA has not established a legal limit in oranges (or orange juice). FDA will therefore reject for importation orange juice with more than “trace” amounts of MBC, greater than 1.0 ppb – that’s “parts per billion.”

At the same time, MBC is permissible in apples, apricots and bananas. Should the FDA stop all of those fruits too?  The concentration of another pesticide (thiophanate methyl – TPM) that is related to (and degrades down to) MBC is permitted in apples and bananas at 2.0 ppm (that’s “M” for “million”) and in Apricots at a whopping 15 ppm. So how does FDA test for the presence of TPM? By testing for MBC – the same pesticide that is causing all the imported OJ containers to stop at U.S. ports of entry.

FDA will not be stopping apples, bananas and apricots due to the presence of 1000s more times (in concentration) of the same pesticide chemical simply because EPA has established those high tolerances. Of course, if FDA were worried about the safety of MBC, it would also have to stop grape juice (with an EPA tolerance of 5.0 ppm) and cherry juice (the heavy-hitter, with an EPA tolerance at a monstrous 20 ppm). Grape juice is used as the base juice for most fruit juices sold in the U.S.A. – and it has a tolerance for TPM, which is measured by testing for carbendazim, the original “culprit.”

“Expect FDA to use these recent pesticide results in OJ as an excuse to stop, delay and test for MBC [carbendazim] in many other fresh and finished fruit and vegetable products”, said Benjamin England, former FDA Regulatory Counsel and founder of FDAImports.com.  “While FDA is busy locking up the American orange juice supply, U.S. consumers will have to turn to other juices for their kids, like apple and grape juices. Apparently the fact that MBC is permitted at much (much) higher concentrations in those other juice products is lost on FDA.” The group warned that the net result of FDA’s actions in this case will be to greatly increase the cost of orange juice, burden the American public with a gratuitous pesticide scare and unnecessarily bottleneck imports of orange juice and juice concentrates into the United States.