Carbon Monoxide

The meat industry has begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide. The gas, harmless to health at the levels being used, gives meat a bright pink color that lasts weeks. The hope is that it will save the industry much of the $1 billion it says it loses annually from having to discount or discard meat that is reasonably fresh and perfectly safe but no longer pretty. FDA officials defend their actions while consumer groups scream. In a battle between big business and consumers, is it any surprise which one the Administration supports. Today’s Washington Post reports:

The growing use of carbon monoxide as a "pigment fixative" is alarming consumer advocates and others who say it deceives shoppers who depend on color to help them avoid spoiled meat. Those critics are challenging the Food and Drug Administration and the nation's powerful meat industry, saying the agency violated its own rules by allowing the practice without a formal evaluation of its impact on consumer safety.

At the core of the issue is how the FDA has assessed companies' requests to use carbon monoxide in their packaging. It started about five years ago, when Pactiv Corp. of Lake Forest, Ill., urged the FDA to declare the approach "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS -- a regulatory category that allows a firm to proceed with its plans without public review or formal agency "approval." The FDA told Pactiv in 2002 it had no argument with the proposal. In 2004, Precept Foods received a similar letter, and recently Tyson did as well.

[Consumer advocates] note that the European Union has banned the use of carbon monoxide as a color stabilizer in meat and fish. A December 2001 report from the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food concluded that the gas (whose chemical abbreviation is "CO") did not pose a risk as long as food was kept cold enough during storage and transport to prevent microbial growth. But should the meat become inadvertently warmer at some point, it warned, "the presence of CO may mask visual evidence of spoilage."

How is it [advocates ask}that something can be deemed "generally recognized as safe" when there is enough scientific debate over the issue to warrant a ban in Europe? "I just picture a refrigerator truck breaking down in Arizona and sitting there for an afternoon. Then, 'Hey, we got it repaired and nobody knows the difference,' and there you go."

Opponents also say the FDA was wrong to consider carbon monoxide a color fixative rather than a color additive -- a crucial decision because additives must pass a rigorous FDA review. They note that freshly cut meat looks purplish red, and that the addition of carbon monoxide -- which binds to a muscle protein called myoglobin -- turns it irreversibly pink.

The agency has never formally approved the gas's use, but rather looked at information provided by the companies and decided not to object. That is what has opponents most upset.

"The FDA should not have accepted carbon monoxide in meat without doing its own independent evaluation of the safety implications," Elizabeth Campbell, former head of the FDA's office of food labeling, wrote in a statement released in November.