QUESTION:
Are spice imports contaminated with rat urine?
ANSWER:
All spices are susceptible to filth. Urine, hairs, feces all have been found in spice imports to the U.S. There's no need to fear: spices are purified before they hit grocery store shelves.
SOURCES:
FDA "Pathogens and Filth in Spices" 2013
Facebook Rat Video
U.S. Department of Agriculture
PROCESS:
WUSA9 viewer Karen Leatherman Heartman from West Virginia sent a viral video with almost 200,000 shares.
A worker raking chili peppers on a tarp can be seen in the video with rats weaving in and out of the piles of peppers. The post warns people to not buy chili powder because it's full of rat urine that can make you sick.
WUSA9's Verify team of researchers tried authenticating the video using Google's reverse image tool, but it's been shared by too many authors worldwide to trace. Most people who posted it told the Verify team it was forwarded to them.
Our team didn't stop there. We wanted to fact check weather chili peppers like those tainted in the video could ever make their way to American kitchens.
A 2013 report from the Food and Drug Administration revealed it can and it has.
From 2007 to 2009 they sampled incoming shipments of spices on U.S. docks and found bird feathers, beetles, cow hair, rat fur and poop. Twelve percent of imported spices were contaminated with filth.
Spices are easily tainted and the U.S. is the biggest importer.
Spice imported from Mexico and India have notoriously high rates of contamination and they're two of the biggest U.S. spice suppliers, the Department of Agriculture said.
In February, the FDA issued a follow-up.
The FDA tested more than 7,000 spice samples from grocery shelves and found 18 tested positive for salmonella, which came out to .002 percent.
After the raw ingredients get to the U.S., spice manufacturers treat and clean them to take out all the crud.
So, we can Verify that yes, the raw spices coming into the U.S. do contain some pretty gross stuff. However, we can also Verify by the time they get to your shopping cart, the contamination has been cleaned up.
