FDA Bans Chinese Mushrooms After Food Poisonings

The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday that it will indefinitely ban all shipments of canned mushrooms from China following what the FDA called “a significant and alarming” series of outbreaks of severe food poisoning.

FDA officials said that they believed that contamination with staphylococcal enterotoxin “may be widespread” throughout the mushroom-processing industry in China and that the ban will continue “until satisfactory sanitation control measures” are implemented in China.

The FDA action represents a major expansion of a ban that began last May with institutional-size cans following four outbreaks of illness in which about 100 people became sick. No one died but 16 people were hospitalized.

Since then, the FDA said, inspectors have identified contamination in additional smaller sizes of cans produced by 10 plants in China. Also, the agency said, the FDA has reason to believe that two processing plants in China that have not been approved by the United States may have used the codes of other, approved plants to try to export their products illegally.

“The results of our investigation give us no reason to have confidence in the safety of any style or any size can of mushrooms processed in the PRC (People’s Republic of China),” said Ronald G. Chessmore, the FDA’s acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, in a letter to Chinese officials here.

Thus far, all of the illnesses have been linked to mushrooms shipped in 68-ounce or No. 10 institutional-size cans. “This is not the size a consumer would be expected to buy,” said Chris Lecos, a spokesman for the FDA.

No cases of mushroom-related illness have been uncovered in Orange County, and representatives of several retail food chains said there is no indication that any food now on store shelves could be contaminated.

“At this point there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that there is a problem with what’s on the shelves,” said Vickie Sanders, spokesman for Vons Grocery Co., which owns 342 supermarkets, 37 of them in Orange County.

“If there was a reason to think there was a problem with the existing shelf product, they (the FDA) would have asked for a recall on shelf product,” Sanders added. “They have not done so.”

Vons does stock Green Giant label mushrooms that come from China, but only in the smaller sizes, Sanders said. Store executives will meet with the executives from the label owner, Pillsbury Co., today to discuss the product, she said.

A spokesman for Alpha Beta Co. said the chain never stocked the large sizes and had pulled small sizes of canned mushrooms off the shelves when word of the problem reached them two weeks ago.

“We had them tested, and it was negative,” said Senior Vice President Bill Wade.

Word of the ban was slower to reach Orange County Chinese restaurants and food stores. Random calls late Monday found owners unaware of the ban and unsure whether their mushrooms might be unsafe. Several said their brands were from Taiwan and thus not implicated in the mushroom scare.

A major wholesaler of Oriental Foods, JFC International Inc. in Los Angeles, said it had stopped stocking Chinese canned mushrooms more than a year ago. General manager George Maruta said the contaminated lots had all showed up only on the East Coast.

“In China, they must have had some warning, and the canner in China quit shipping it,” Maruta said. “We’ve been out of stock for at least a year and half, so we don’t even have one can in the warehouse.”

Orange County epidemiologist Dr. Thomas Prendergast said he was not aware of any mushroom-associated illness locally. “Either we haven’t been affected at all or we haven’t heard about it,” he said. “I’m unaware that we’ve had a problem here.”

Lecos, the FDA spokesman, said the agency last spring notified all state health and other regulatory officials responsible for retail food markets, as well as all major trade associations responsible for the distribution of these products, alerting them to potential contamination.

Since then, however, the FDA has found toxin in size 5.5 and 16-ounce cans, which consumers can purchase in retail outlets.

“We cannot rule out the possibility that smaller size cans may have ended up on the retail food shelf and in someone’s home,” Lecos said.

However, he said, “any product produced by the PRC, from any one of the processing plants, would be so identified. It would be very clear that this product came from the PRC. It has to be labeled. That’s one of the requirements.”

Symptoms of food poisoning involving staphylococcal toxins can develop rapidly after eating a contaminated product and include nausea, vomiting, retching, abdominal cramping and prostration. In more severe cases, headaches, muscle cramping and changes in blood pressure and pulse rate can also occur, the FDA said. In most cases, those stricken recover in two or three days.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this story in Orange County.