Gelatin in candy spreads bovine scare to U.S.

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Gelatin in candy spreads bovine scare to U.S.

 

Gelatin in candy spreads bovine scare to U.S.

Beef-based ingredient

 

 

Steven Edwards

National Post

 

Plinio Lepri, The Associated Press

 

NEW YORK - Fear of mad cow disease has resulted in New Yorkers trashing an

imported candy that has been pulled from the shelves in Poland.

 

The panic is over Mamba, a popular fruit chew made in Germany by the same

company that markets Werther's Original boiled sweets and four other products in

Canada.

 

Mamba contains a beef-based gelatin, which Polish health officials fear could

come from cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the

scientific name for mad cow disease.

 

When people eat BSE-infected beef, they may develop the brain-destroying disease

new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD), so called because it resembles a rare

human disease by that name.

 

The disease has killed more than 80 people in Britain and two in France. More

recently, cases have been reported in Italy and Germany.

 

" The German health authority has certified that all the gelatin we use has been

properly prepared for human consumption, " Tony Nelson, vice-president of Storck

USA, the American wing of the German manufacturer, told the New York Daily News.

 

He said the company would eliminate the gelatin from Mamba candy sold in Poland,

but not elsewhere. Mamba, which comes in packs of 18 in four flavours, is sold

throughout New York and is also available on the Internet.

 

There are no plans to introduce it to Canada, according to a spokesman for

Storck Canada, based in Mississauga, Ont.

 

" The products we import into Canada are not affected by mad cow disease, " said

Bjorn Pabst, the company's controller. " We checked [into the mixture of the

ingredients] of our Canadian products, and we didn't have any issues. "

 

A spokesman for Canada's Food Inspection Agency said beef-based gelatin is

contained in a wide variety of foodstuffs and cosmetics.

 

Such products can be imported into Canada from countries where BSE has occurred.

Only imports of beef and beef-based products from these countries are banned.

 

" Products that contain beef-based gelatin are under review, but not yet banned, "

said the spokesman. " Gelatin is usually produced from the animal's skin, which

is not a proven conveyor of the disease. "

 

There have been no known cases of BSE in North America, but the disease has

swept across Europe after being first identified in Britain in the 1980s.

 

Fears of mad cow disease have already halved beef consumption in Europe.

Yesterday, the European Union reported those stockpiles of beef are growing into

mountains. Storing all that surplus meat is expected to cost European nations

US$1-billion.

 

In North America, the mad cow scare has depressed cattle futures on the Chicago

Mercantile Exchange. They moved even lower yesterday, partly in reaction to news

that Mamba contained German beef-based gelatin.

 

New Yorkers of Polish origin were the first in the United States to learn about

the candy controversy, which was revealed by an article in Polska Gazeta, a

Brooklyn-based Polish newspaper.

 

" A cow disease in jelly? That's absurd, " said Anna Romanowskici as she shopped

at a delicatessen in Brooklyn's Greenpoint, home to New York's biggest Polish

community. But she added she would take no chances on the candy, despite a plea

by the New York City Health Department not to panic.

 

Darek Granatowski, another shopper, said he would no longer buy the candy for

his seven-year-old boy. " You can't gamble with the life of your kid, " he said.

 

" In Poland, this candy is so popular that hundreds of thousands of boxes of it

will have to be trashed, " said Waldemar Piasecky, author of the Polska Gazeta

article.

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