Accepting food infestation: how do you like your insect filth?

Mammalian excreta, rodent filth, insect filth, mould, rot, insects, larvae, mites, insect eggs, sand and grit, mildew, parasites: it’s an unappetising list, but, as the New York Times observes, the US Food and Drug Administration publishes a useful handbook detailing the acceptable amounts of these and other contaminants in a range of foods.

How many aphids to expect in your broccoli

US consumers are told to expect to find up to 60 aphids / thrips / mites in every 100g of frozen broccoli (but only up to 30 in frozen Brussels sprouts), up to 60 insect fragments in a 100g chocolate bar, up to 4 rodent hairs in 25g of curry powder, and a “copepod accompanied by pus pockets” in 3% of their red fish fillets. These are the specified action levels, below which there is “no inherent hazard to health”.

The FDA’s handbook The Food Defect Action Levels sets out the “levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans”. It’s a stark reminder that we can’t expect any of our food to be absolutely pure and unadulterated. All food is fundamentally a natural product, however much processing it goes through before it reaches our plates. Indeed, processing may only disguise the adulteration: a maggot in a fresh apple is easy to spot, any maggots in a glass of apple juice or spoon of apple purée less so.

Sharing the natural world

We may think of the “natural” as representing all that is wholesome and good, but we share the natural world with every other mammal, as well as insects, fungi and bacteria. Harvesting food is a process of isolating the parts of the natural world that we like to eat, but the separation can never be absolute.

And our food remains an interesting source of nutrition to other denizens of the natural world. Keeping it good is a constant battle, as we seek to deter our competitors with chemicals (from pesticides and detergents to salt and sugar), heat, packaging and more. When food goes bad, it hasn’t suddenly flipped from one clear state to another; bad food has simply reached a level of contamination that we no longer find acceptable.

Contamination in the UK

The UK’s Food Standards Agency doesn’t appear to publish any detailed information on the acceptable degree of contamination of our food. There is, however, a realistic recognition in food law that contamination is only problematic beyond a certain level. The 1990 Food Safety Act states “food fails to comply with food safety requirements if [...] it is so contaminated (whether by extraneous matter or otherwise) that it would not be reasonable to expect it to be used for human consumption in that state”. Presumably it would be a matter for legal argument where the limits of reasonable expectation lie.