Chuck Norton said:
> how did this stuff get into Chinese honey and more important why?
> Is there a serious internal problem in China with American Foulbrood,
> ABF, and/or other honeybee diseases in China with resistance to
> Terramycin and other antibiodics that the Chinese have possibly already
> used to treat their hives?
It does not seem reasonable to conclude that chloramphenicol was being
used due to resistance.
It appears that chloramphenicol was being used in many food processing
applications, not just in beekeeping. Therefore, it seems that whoever
makes this stuff simply has one heck of a salesman traveling around Asia.
Maybe the price was lower than other possible choices.
But the contamination did not "suddenly appear" this year.
It likely was there all along, for years.
Here's why it went undetected for so long - the best that could be
done in regard to things like chloramphenicol with the equipment
traditionally available was:
Gas Chromatograph (GC) 5.0 parts per billion
Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) 1.0 - 2.0 parts per billion
Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) 1.0 - 2.0 parts per billion
Then, a shiny new toy appeared, allowing detection at even lower levels.
Much lower levels. LESS than 1 part per billion.
"Liquid Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer" (LC/MS) can detect things
like chloramphenicol at levels down to a "limit of quantitation"
(LOQ) of 0.3 ppb, with a "limit of detection" (LOD) of about 0.08 ppb.
Those who don't care about "LOD and LOQ" can skip the indented stuff:
A "Limit of Detection" of an analytical method is a statistical thing.
First, the "critical value" is found where the reading of a "known
contaminated" test sample exceeds the reading for a "known clean"
sample, using a normal (Gaussian) frequency distribution of zero
readings and accounting for probability of error.
Once one knows the critical value, the limit of detection (LOD) is defined
as where a 50% probability exists of classification of the contaminant
as present or not.
The limit of quantitation (LOQ) is the minimum quantity which can be
determined with both defined probability level (b < 0.01) and acceptable
relative uncertainty.
The UK and in Europe used this new technique, and found chloramphenicol
residues in shrimp and prawns, fish fillets, sausage casings, and honey
from China. Chloramphenicol has also been detected in shrimp and prawns
from Vietnam and Indonesia, and in shrimp from Myanmar.
Residues of another banned drug, nitrofurans, have been detected in shrimp
and prawns from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh.
Why all the seafood? Seafood processing plants use chemicals to keep
bacteria counts down. It appears that they were not paying attention
to what they were being sold.
The Asian seafood processing plants, when told of the contamination,
claimed to not even know what "chloramphenicol" even was, so it could
well be that they had no idea what was in the stuff they were buying
and using to "keep things clean". Offhand, I believe this.
But, is any of this a valid "health risk" to the consumer?
Well, a "part per billion" is one part in 1,000,000,000, and "0.3 parts
per billion" would be 3 parts in ten billion (10,000,000,000), or
one part in 3,333,333,333.
It should be pretty clear that these are very tiny amounts, at the
absolute edge of man's ability to detect such things. One would have
to eat quite a bit of contaminated shrimp and honey (honey-glazed shrimp,
anyone?) to even have a valid statistical chance of ingesting a quantity
of contamination that might have a tangible effect.
But is ANYTHING really "pure" down at the level of "parts per TEN BILLION"?
I kinda doubt it.
To put these large numbers into perspective:
a) There are roughly 6 billion, 262 million (6,262,000,000) people on
the planet right now, So the amount of contamination is like saying
"2 people of Earth's entire population")
b) Our galaxy is estimated to contain roughly 100 billion
(100,000,000,000) stars. But we have not counted them all just yet.
Not even close.
c) Good eyes can see about 3,000 stars on a clear moonless sky far
from city lights. Less than you thought, isn't it?
But is all the talk about "zero tolerance" a valid consumer-protection
and health concern, or is it nothing more than the same old agricultural
protectionism, dressed up in the white lab coat of science to make it
look more impressive and authoritative?
And when the definition of "zero" moves several decimal points to the right,
at what point does everyone realize that "zero tolerance" is meaningless
when no one can breathe, eat, or live without running into similar levels
of "contamination"?
And when do the same governments start applying the same level of rigor to
air and water pollution that they do to imported food? Will they ever?
I'm not holding my breath.
I think that anyone who wants to invest in LC/MS gear and learn how to use it
could find a basis to ban any/all imported honey from ANYWHERE on the basis
of one sort of scary contaminant or another, simply because at the very edge
of detection, the statistics start to matter more than the detection ability
of the hardware.
I suspect that everyone knows by now that under the GATT agreements, such
"health concerns" and "biosecurity concerns" are the ONLY effective way to
block imports. So the question is "who'll be the next unwitting victim of
this technology?"
Maybe Europe will start testing honey from the US and Canada next.
Maybe they will find the residues from beekeepers washing their hands
with anti-bacterial soap before loading the uncapper.
jim (who wants a ThermoQuest Surveyor MS Pump and Autosampler,
ThermoQuest Finnigan TSQ 7000 with API2,
Xcalibur, Version 1.2,
Surveyor AS, Version 1.2 SP 1,
Surveyor MS pump, Version 1.2,
and TSQ MS, Version 1.1
...for Christmas, 'cause it appears that his pretty little
HPLC set-up is destined for the scrap heap.)
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