For some background information:
Hong Kong customs currently doesn’t have ETO-related documentation requirements to import spices. ETO is understood to be a cancer causing chemical. And ETO is not only prevalent in India, but usage of ETO is a well accepted practice AND known norm for spice manufacturers and even local housewife consumers.
Hong Kong Food & Hygiene Dept & Consumer Council from time to time conduct random tests on food (and other) products available for sale on retail shelves in Hong Kong. Purchases are usually initiated as plainclothes officers, and subsequently undertake random test for any parameters - those currently in legislation as well as those not, but may be of interest.
ETO has been only recently banned as a food additive substance in Hong Kong, just since last year, so there is a particular scrutiny on high risk ETO foods, have which led to multiple spice products being caught, these happened to be MDH & Everest brand spices. That then led to a deeper, wider manhunt so to say, whereupon hundreds of these brand products were tested and subsequently also tested positive. This led to the recall individual batches of hundreds of products.
The two brands are behemoths in the spice industry, and always have goods on the way to Hong Kong. We expect new imports to have stopped temporarily.
As a family, we at Regency Spices have been involved in the spice trade for over 70 years now, beginning in India but now spread globally. We know there are other methods besides ETO used worldwide for controlling microbes (such as steam treatment), but none of them are commonly in use in India.
We have always insisted all our suppliers not to supply irradiated / ETO spices. And further for many years, we get our Indian origin spices lab tested for negative-ETO. ETO usage is too prevalent in India, as it is not only legal but also a known, accepted common practice. ETO is indeed not good due to direct links to cancer, so we wouldn’t feel good had we knowingly sold a poison-like substance.
As such, we haven't faced any new hurdles in importing Indian Spices, but we know that many exporters are scared due to the zero-tolerance policy in Hong Kong, and the growing nature of the news - Singapore also carried out rounds of testing and recalls, Nepal has banned the importation & sale of Everest and MDH brands, and the United Kingdom have also begun to take note of the situation.
We spend a lot of money to get our supply chain to cooperate with our processing methods to control the microbial risks. Lack of treatment is not possible since products will rapidly grow microbes and get infestations without them.
We expect that probably, for some time these cheaply produced ETO-Indian spices will get replaced by higher quality ones (like Regency’s or perhaps those from other countries that use alternative treatment methods).
Currently there are still batches of Everest and MDH available for sale in Hong Kong, as a total ban has not yet been issued. However, it may take a long time for these brands to put in place non-ETO production lines (if at all).
ETO is a legal additive in the USA (within limits and warning labels) and Irradiation - a treatment method very similar to ETO, is also a legal substance in parts of Europe (with prescribed limits and with warning labels). ETO itself is also an acceptable method of controlling shelf life in products in a lot of less economically developed countries. So we doubt that the addition of a single region of Hong Kong or Singapore will in itself sway large spice manufacturers towards using more healthy or modern methods.
photo credit: sara marlowe, Reuters photo
