The Seattle Times had a shocking article today about Arsenic found in Apple Juice from Yakima Valley. Well not so shocking for us, we’ve been shouting to the rafters about the orchard industry… Valley Processing, Inc. got a warning from the FDA.
What’s the matter with a little bit of Arsenic? The common excuse is “well its a naturally occurring element in nature”. Only problem is that the stuff they found in this Yakima Valley apple juice is INORGANIC ARSENIC, which is associated with CANCER and a bunch of other horrible health problems. It most likely came from an older orchard. As you know if you read this blog, old orchards can be hotbeds of toxicity for lead and arsenic.
In the letter, addressed to Mary Ann Bliesner, President of Valley Processing Inc., The FDA pointed out that, “prolonged exposure to high levels of inorganic arsenic is associated with cancer, skin lesions, developmental effects, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity, and diabetes in humans.”
IS THAT ALL?? Why did this company get let off with JUST a warning? Why not something much more harsh?
Is anybody going to wake up? We need to crack down on the Apple industry; an industry that has had excessive hubris and disregard for human and environmental health.
Washington apple growers are well aware possible lead and arsensic in the soil because the information is out there and widely known. They just don’t want to confront the truth because its bad for business. Heck, PBS even did a documentary on it, which our Blog detailed a while back. You can read our past Blog article called
The Irony of Lake Chelan’s “Trout” brand of Apples
The thing that really ticks me off, and PBS is the one that makes this brilliant point, is that the industry wants to keep all the Lead Arsenate history hush-hush.
This is what PBS said: “But the apple industry and politicians resisted efforts to make a bigger issue of contamination on former orchards. Evidence of actual exposures was scant, they said; too much noise about lead and arsenic would hurt the region’s apple growers, they contended.”
So what do we get as a result of the Apple industry’s hush-hush attitudes??? We get the FDA finding ARSENIC in apple juice! We get poison in our food, because the apple industry does not want to confront the past and acknowledge that it dramatically affects the present. These farmers don’t want to think or talk about it. Well, our blog is talking about it, and we think the apple industry should be ashamed of itself for not having more awareness and being more careful with the products its produces. Think about how many children drink apple juice!
