The State Administration for Market Regulation of China announced on May 7th the “Notice of the State Administration for Market Regulation on the Unqualified Situation of 20 Batches of Food Inspection”. According to the notice, the State Administration for Market Regulation of the People’s Republic of China recently organized 378 batches of samples of 23 categories of food to conduct food safety supervision and random inspections, and Three Squirrels’ products were found to have failed to meet quality standards.
Specifically, the open pine nuts sold in the Chengdu branch of Chongqing Carrefour Commercial Co., Ltd. in Sichuan Province, which are nominally packaged by Three Squirrels Co., Ltd. in Wuhu City, Anhui Province, have a peroxide value (calculated as fat) that does not meet the national food safety standards.
Public information shows that peroxide value is an indicator of the degree of oxidation of fats and fatty acids. It represents the active oxygen content in a 1 kg sample and is used to indicate whether the sample has been oxidized and deteriorated.
In layman’s terms, peroxide value is the highest limit of allowable food oxidation set in the food standard. If this value is exceeded, the food is not a qualified food. A peroxide value exceeding the limit indicates that the food has deteriorated, and the deteriorated food may have an adverse effect on the human body.
Long-term consumption of foods with severe peroxide values may cause gastrointestinal discomfort and diarrhea. The reason why the peroxide value (calculated as fat) in nut and seed food exceeds the standard may be that the product oil has deteriorated, or the fat in the raw material has been oxidized, or it may be related to the improper environmental conditions of the product during storage and transportation.
It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Three Squirrels failed spot checks.
On August 15, 2017, the former State Food and Drug Administration of China issued the “Notice of the General Administration on Three Batches of Food Failures” (No. 135, 2017), which showed that the pistachios sold by Tmall Supermarket in Tmall (website) Mall, which were allegedly produced by Three Squirrels Co. on January 22, 2017, had a mold detection value of 70 CFU/g, which was 1.8 times higher than the national standard (not more than 25 CFU/g) of China. In this regard, the former Wuhu Food and Drug Administration imposed a confiscation of illegal income of 2505.89 yuan and an administrative penalty of 50,000 yuan on Three Squirrels Co.
In addition, in 2016, Three Squirrels Co., Ltd. was fined 56,345.62 yuan by Wuhu City Yijiang District Market Supervision Administration for adding medicine (lotus seed core) to food and producing food with non-food ingredients (rose hips).