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.”
Are there a lot of products that come from Catalonia?
There is a high concentration of Spanish industry in the region, and a major cargo port in Barcelona. Madrid and Barcelona are, by far, the moat important cities in the country.
Some. They have big chemical industry so a lot of cleaning products and cosmetics come from there. But it’s always easy to find substitutes. Also because of their criminal behavior a lot of companies moved to other regions so it’s even easier to avoid them now.