Three Charged With Conspiracy in Sale of Phony Orange Juice

In what the Food and Drug Administration called one of the worst instances of consumer fraud in years, three former top officials of a Chicago-based manufacturer have been charged with selling millions of cases of orange juice labeled as 100% pure, but which was adulterated with beet sugar, waste water and other ingredients.

The juice was sold under 50 different labels through 155 supermarket chains, warehouses and wholesalers and reached stores in at least 35 states, the FDA said Wednesday.

A 19-count federal indictment issued earlier this week charged two former owners and a top executive of the now-defunct Bodine’s Inc. of Chicago with conspiracy in violation of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

The indictment said that between 1978 and 1985 the company used large amounts of low-cost, inferior ingredients in juice that it falsely labeled and sold as pure, unsweetened frozen orange juice concentrate.

These ingredients included beet sugar, corn sugar, monosodium glutamate, ascorbic acid, malic acid, potassium sulfate, orange pulp wash--the fibrous, least desirable part of the orange, grapefruit solids and a waste product from a water distillation system, according to Anton R. Valukas, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. These substances comprised 15% to 40% of the products’ ingredients, he said.

Charged in the indictment were Edward M. Boden Sr. and his son Edward M. Boden Jr., both former owners and directors of the company, and Roger J. Walsh Jr., former vice president for finance. Walsh’s father, Roger J. Walsh Sr., former executive vice president and chief operating officer, was named an unindicted co-conspirator.

If convicted, they could each be sentenced to 57 years imprisonment and fined up to $4,750,000.

Valukas said that there were no indications that the products posed a serious health risk, but that “those who put adulterated and misbranded foods in the marketplace can expect to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Marie Ekvall, a consumer affairs officer in the FDA’s Chicago office, said that the investigation began in 1983 after the Florida Citrus Commission complained to the FDA that Bodine was using concentrated pulp wash instead of pure juice concentrate in its product.

The brand labels under which the product was sold include Heritage House, Honey Farm, Big Top, White Swan and Red Owl.

The manufacturing operation was sold in 1985 to McCain OJ Inc..