The orange juice industry -- including Minute Maid owner Coca-Cola -- is anxiously waiting to see if the Food and Drug Administration makes any decisions soon concerning traces of a fungicide found in their product.
The nation's top food cops are testing all juice products coming out of Brazil -- the world's biggest orange producer -- to see if they contain amounts of carbendazim large enough to pose a threat to U.S. beverage supplies.
The FDA said the trace amounts found so far are safe, but added it would continue testing. It did not say when testing would be complete.
"We're working with the FDA and will take our guidance from them," Coca-Cola spokesman Dan Schafer said Thursday about any steps the beverage giant would take to address safety concerns.
Coke made the statement the same day it was revealed the Atlanta-based company had reported the fungicide to the FDA in December. Coke found the fungicide after routine checks of juice supplies being shipped to the United States. Because the fungicide was found in the general supply, it is affecting all brands produced in the United States.
“This is an industry issue that affects every company that produces products in the U.S. using orange juice from Brazil," Coke said in a release Thursday. "As the FDA said in a letter to the Juice Products Association, at the low levels that were reported, there are no safety concerns with orange juice in the U.S. made with Brazilian juice.”
The impact of the investigation on the multibillion dollar juice industry won't be known until the FDA completes its testing, said Stephanie Meyering, a spokeswoman for the juice association. About 41 percent of the imported oranges and juice used in U.S. juices comes from Brazil.
Coca-Cola and its chief rival, Pepsi, are the biggest players in the orange juice arena, accounting for 58 percent of the market, said John Sicher, editor and publisher of industry magazine Beverage Digest. In addition to Minute Maid, Coke also owns the Simply Orange brand. Pepsi owns segment leader Tropicana.
Tropicana said in a statement that it supports the FDA move and is taking the matter seriously. The company also said it decided some time ago to use 100 percent Florida oranges in its Tropicana Pure Premium juice line -- a decision Tropicana said is unrelated to the current situation.
"This transition to production for Tropicana Pure Premium is well under way and will be completed by the end of the month," the company said. "As the largest buyer of Florida oranges, this is a minor supply chain change for our Tropicana Pure Premium product."
According to the FDA, carbendazim is used to fight black spot, a type of mold that grows on orange trees. However its use has not been approved in the United States.
In the letter to the Juice Products Association, Nega Beru, director of the FDA's Office of Food Safety, said the agency would not call for orange juice to be pulled from the shelves because of the low levels of the fungicide, which registered in the "low parts per billion range."
"FDA is, however, conducting its own testing of orange juice for carbendazim, and, if the agency identifies orange juice with carbendazim at levels that present a public health risk, it will alert the public and take the necessary action to ensure that the product is removed from the market," Beru wrote in the Monday letter.
Economist Tim Mescon said Coke made the right call by reporting its findings to the FDA. He said ignoring the substance could have been a financial disaster if there had been a health scare and Coke was aware of it.
"Props to Coke for aggressively alerting the FDA about this," said Mescon, president of Columbus State University. "They seemed to take a very forthright approach on this."
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