Trouble at the Grocery Store

EDB recalls leave food manufacturers fretful and watchful

Saying that it is better to "err on the side of caution," New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean last week ordered all boxes of Duncan Hines Deluxe Devil's Food Cake Mix bearing lot number 3116C2A removed from grocery-store shelves throughout his state. Kean's move came just 24 hours after New Jersey health officials found that a box from lot 3116C2A contained 470 parts per billion of the cancer-causing pesticide EDB, roughly three times the recommended federal limit. The Governor urged consumers who found boxes at home bearing the suspect number to "return them to stores or discard them."

Last week, as EDB alerts continued to roll across the U.S., food manufacturers feared that the pesticide scare could decimate sales of their products. Environmental Protection Agency officials said that high levels of the chemical had been detected in at least some of the products of most major food manufacturers in the U.S. Some states, like New Jersey, recalled contaminated baking mixes and destroyed tainted oranges, while others, such as Texas and Ohio, adopted federal guidelines. Massachusetts imposed more stringent standards than those handed down by Washington. It is estimated that this will add $100 million to the $1.1 billion that consumers in that state spend annually on baked goods and grain products. At least ten states opted, for the moment, to do nothing at all.

The statistics did little to cheer Procter & Gamble, whose 30-year-old Duncan Hines line was being hit particularly hard. Two days after the New Jersey warning, company officials recalled Duncan Hines blueberry mix, lot number 3294W4, from stores in Iowa. At Procter & Gamble's Cincinnati headquarters, executives complained that Duncan Hines was getting an unfairly large share of media attention.

Said Spokesman Patrick Hayes: "EDB does not represent a health hazard. There is certainly no emergency in the foods currently in distribution." Procter & Gamble has removed mixes containing more than 150 p.p.b. from all its warehouses, and swept those same products off grocery-store shelves in all 50 states.

Procter & Gamble was far from the only company caught in the EDB scare.

Last week Quaker Oats learned that South Carolina had found its Flako corn-muffin mix had more EDB than federal guidelines permit. "We're not happy about it," said Ron Bottrell, a worried Quaker Oats spokesman. "This was our first product to be found out of compliance anywhere." In Ohio, Minnesota and North Dakota, General Mills voluntarily took Bisquick off the shelves, while South Carolina and Alabama recalled the company's Betty Crocker white-cake mixes.

To answer questions from confused consumers, General Mills set up 13 telephone hot lines in several states. When New York officials discovered that lot 3297-D of Borden's Cracker Jack Extra Fresh Popping Corn had an excessive amount of EDB, the company recalled it.

If states begin to adopt lower EDB levels, producers could be forced to increase the cost of their products because of the added expense of cleansing the pesticide from their flour. Massachusetts, for example, next month may reduce its current 10-p.p.b. level in baking mixes to 1 p.p.b. Those new standards could eliminate all baking mixes and flour from that state's shelves, according to Howard Holmes, president of Chelsea Milling, which markets Jiffy baking mixes. Says Holmes: "The crops are in now, and they were all fumigated with EDB.

There'll be no new crops until late summer.

We have to use what we have."