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.”

  • BobGnarley@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    A “robust regulatory process” wouldnt have 10 million plus jars of peanut butter with E Coli contamination make it to the store shelves and take months to figure out about, AFTER some people die. That happened like 1 to 2 years ago. Now a bunch of kids get lead poisoning from Applesauce pouches so we take them off the shelves and act like we have some amazing system. How about those cancer causing dyes that california is banning andNOW the FDA is talking about, PERHAPS banning them nationwide. Our FDA is trash.