Adulterated food

Adulteration is a legal offense and when the food fails to meet the legal standards set by the government, it is said to have been Adulterated Food. One form of adulteration is the addition of another substance to a food item in order to increase the quantity of the food item in raw form or prepared form, which results in the loss of the actual quality of the food item. These substances may be either available food items or non-food items. Among meat and meat products some of the items used to adulterate are water or ice, carcasses, or carcasses of animals other than the animal meant to be consumed. In the case of seafood, adulteration may refer to species substitution (mislabeling), which replaces the species identified on the product label with another species, or undisclosed processing methods, in which treatments such as additives, excessive glazing, or short-weighting are not disclosed to the consumer. List of food contamination incidents Historians have recognized cases of food adulteration in Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Contemporary accounts of adulteration date from the 1850s to the present day. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), regulates and enforces laws on food safety as well as Food Defense. The FDA provides some technical definitions of adulterated food in various United States laws. 1906 (21 U.S.C. 601 et. seq.) 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 321 et seq.) 1957 Poultry Products Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. 451 et seq.) 2011 Food Safety and Modernization Act The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act 1988) provides that food is "adulterated" if it meets any one of the following criteria: (1) it bears or contains any "poisonous or deleterious substance" which may render it injurious to health; (2) it bears or contains any added poisonous or added deleterious substance (other than a pesticide residue, food additive, color additive, or new animal drug, which are covered by separate provisions) that is unsafe; (3) its container is composed, in whole or in part, of any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render the contents injurious to health; or (4) it bears or contains a pesticide chemical residue that is unsafe.