Growing concerns about Chinese apple juice imports

So now it is apple juice: You probably would not have guessed that most of the apple juice filling those juice boxes and jugs on U.S. grocery shelves comes from China. Over the past ten years, China, which produces up to 65 percent of the world’s apples, has become the top supplier of concentrate used in apple juice sold in the U.S., contributing more than 40 percent of the juice consumed here, compared with 22 percent from domestically produced apples, according to the U.S. Apple Association trade group. Both U.S. producers who use the foreign concentrate and fruit trade groups say the individual companies and the federal government insist that suppliers follow strict safety standards. Several firms said they also have auditors test the imported juice as well as conducting their own tests. The Dallas Morning News’s Karen Robinson-Jacobs writes that it is important to note that there have been no major warnings about China-produced juice as there were earlier this year about toys from China, tainted toothpaste and pet food. Still, some consumers are registering concern with juice makers and on Web sites. Others simply do not know that the juice they are giving their families comes from China. “Do most consumers know? Right now, probably not,” said Michael Hansen, senior scientist for food safety with Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. “It would probably surprise people.”

The amount of apple juice concentrate pouring in from China skyrocketed from only 4.5 million gallons in 1996 to 249.54 million gallons in 2005 — fifty-five times as much — according to figures from the Apple Association. Last year, the United States imported 225.54 million gallons from that country. The juice is most often shipped to the United States as concentrate, with water and packaging added here. Some consumers became wary of Chinese goods this summer, after a steady stream of news reports ranging from toothpaste tainted with diethylene glycol (or DEG), a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze, to lead paint on toys, to pet food containing melamine, an industrial chemical. There have been no such warnings related to juice, but nervous consumers began phoning some of the top U.S. juice makers this summer, representatives said.

Carol Freysinger, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Juice Products Association, called fruit and vegetable juices some of the “most heavily regulated foods in the U.S., subject to many levels of quality control by both individual processors and the federal government.” Production of juice to be sold in the United States, whether foreign or domestic, must adhere to strict regulations referred to as HACCP ( Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point), one of the FDA’s most stringent set of rules. America, by the way, is still home to acres of apple orchards, but growers, seeking top dollar, most often bypass the juice market, choosing instead to sell their fruit to the fresh and processed markets, which pay more. U.S. growers, for the most part, “don’t go out with the intent of growing juice apples,” said Jim Cranney Jr., vice president of the U.S. Apple Association based in Vienna, Virginia. “If you’re looking at things from a grower’s perspective, you want to produce the things that will produce the most revenue for you.” Between 1991 and 2006 the price growers received for juice apples fell by 41 percent, to $96.40 a ton, according to the USDA. “Juice apples have really been a salvage market for domestic producers,” Cranney said, explaining that discolored or misshapen fruit winds up there. Many apple industry insiders argue that U.S. juice prices fell so far because of the flow of concentrate from China. In the 1990s the U.S. apple industry launched an anti-dumping case against Chinese suppliers before the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce. Ultimately, duties up to almost 52 percent were assessed on some Chinese producers, while no duties were imposed on others. As a result, the juice from China continued to flow, eclipsing all other sources. Now, there is no longer enough U.S.-made juice available to supply American bottlers, even if tomorrow they decided to forgo Chinese shipments. There are U.S. juices and ciders without foreign concentrate, but determining the contents in a brand of juice can be challenging. Since a 1986 court case, federal law has required U.S. companies that add only water to foreign concentrate to list the concentrate’s country of origin. There is no requirement for where on the package the information must be placed, only that it be legible and in English.