Adulterated food

Adulterated food is impure, unsafe, or unwholesome food. Incidents of food contamination have occurred because of poor harvesting or storage of grain, use of banned veterinary products, industrial discharges, human error and deliberate adulteration and fraud.

Historians have recognized cases of food adulteration in Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Contemporary accounts of adulteration date from the 1850s to the present day.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), regulates and enforces laws on food safety as well as Food Defense. The FDA provides some technical definitions of adulterated food in various United States laws.

"Adulteration" is a legal term meaning that a food product fails to meet federal or state standards. Adulteration is an addition of another substance to a food item in order to increase the quantity of the food item in raw form or prepared form, which may result in the loss of actual quality of food item. These substances may be other available food items or non-food items. Among meat and meat products some of the items used to adulterate are water or ice, carcasses, or carcasses of animals other than the animal meant to be consumed.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act 2888) provides that food is "adulterated" if it meets any one of the following criteria:

Food also meets the definition of adulteration if:

Further, food is considered adulterated if:

The Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957 contain similar provisions for meat and poultry products. [21 U.S.C. § 453(g), 601(m).

Generally, if a food contains a poisonous or deleterious substance that may render it injurious to health, it is considered to be adulterated. For example, apple cider contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 and Brie cheese contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes are adulterated. There are two exceptions to this general rule. First, if the poisonous substance is inherent or naturally occurring and its quantity in the food does not ordinarily render it injurious to health, the food will not be considered adulterated. Thus, a food that contains a natural toxin at very low levels that would not ordinarily be harmful (for instance, small amounts of amygdalin in apricot kernels) is not adulterated.

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