It's happening here, so it's undoubtedly happening everywhere. We are on
family that is never buying supermarket "fresh juice" ever again.

I'd rather get a bag of oranges and squeeze them myself.




http://au.todaytonight.yahoo.com/art...e/juicy-claims


Juicy claims

* Reporter: James Thomas
* Broadcast Date: July 05, 2010

Valued at more than a billion dollars the Australian juice industry is big
business.

The message about the juice made by the major companies – Coca Cola,
Heinz, National foods – is one of freshness. Fresh as the orange it came
from, squeezed daily, a premium product.


But juice companies have a secret called aseptically processed juice, and
it is anything but fresh – claim industry insiders and a whistleblower.

Ron Gray, a citrus grower for most of his life, claims processed juice can
be up to 12 months old.

"I've heard they have kept it for up to two years," he said.

Aseptic juice is freshly squeezed juice which is heated anywhere up to 95
degrees to kill bacteria. Then it is packed into 1,000 litre bags and cold
stored for months, if not years.

"It is not publicised but everyone in the factories knows it goes on," a
whistleblower claimed.

Aseptic processing kills an orange's essential ingredient - vitamin C,
reducing the taste and changing the colour.

Ron alleges he was having trouble getting a decent price for his fresh
oranges and he was puzzled as to why processors weren't buying his
oranges. Then he claims to have discovered juice companies with massive
stockpiles of aseptic juice.

"They are using this as a leaver to talk down the price they are paying
the poor grower," he claimed.

Ron says juice companies are buying more oranges than they need when
prices are cheap, with aseptic processing they can store the excess.

"They are boiling them up and putting them in large aseptic bags into cool
store," Ron alleged.

When supply is low and prices should rise, Ron says the companies offer
unrealistically low prices, knowing they have stores of aseptic to fall
back on.

"They'll say to the poor old grower, 'we don't want your fruit, we have
plenty of aseptic juice', and a month later they'll come back and offer
half of what the original price was."

Ron says growers should be getting 40 cents a kilogram, yet he claims to
have been offered just five cents a kilogram by the juice companies.

"They are doing it for money, they are making money out of this the
easiest and cheapest and simplest way they can. That's all it boils down
to," Ron continued.

Ron said the advent of aseptic is not just killing the industry but is bad
for consumers.

"We have gone backwards from a healthy product to an absolute disaster,"
he stated.

Companies refute the claims made by Ron, saying they must use aseptic
juice to supplement shortfalls in the supply and that it is expensive to
cold store juice.

"You are removing a lot of the fresh tasting components of that juice, so
it becomes a much blander orange juice," the maker of Polly's juice,
George Polymiatis said.

"We certainly don't use aseptic or concentrate. It is straight from the
orange."

A microbiologist by trade, George said aseptic is an inferior damaged
product.

"The moment you heat it, the Vitamin C level is reduced by 50%," George
said.

It's not just Vitamin C which is lost, claims our whistleblower, who
refused to be identified due to feared repercussions.

"We'll also add a little highlighter to it, to give it a bit more flavour.
The highlighter is called Valencia Essence, it is a liquid that tastes
like Valencia orange," the whistleblower, who worked for National Foods,
claimed.

"When you buy fresh juice in winter, 20% would be fresh and the rest of it
would be aseptic and concentrate," the whistleblower claimed.

None of the juice companies list aseptic juice as an ingredient on their
fresh juices.

Senator Nick Xenophon is moving to legislate more honest labelling.

"It says Australian fresh but it's far from it. I don't reckon boiling
fruit juice and storing it for up to 12 months can be described as fresh.
So consumers are being conned," Senator Nick Xenophon said.

"I've introduced legislation to put truth in food labelling with Bob Brown
and Barnaby Joyce. This is an issue that goes beyond politics," Nick said.

Until that happens, customers have no way of telling which companies use
aseptic juice.

National foods makes Australian Fresh and Berri Daily Juice. They refused
an on interview but admitted using aseptic juice.

In an email, Coca Cola, admitted using aseptic juice but denied claiming
their juice was "freshly squeezed". However, on their website Coca Cola's
GV premium range juice is clearly promoted as "fresh".

Graeme Samuel, the Chairman of the Australian competition and consumer
commission, said that companies claiming juice is fresh when using aseptic
juice are breaching the industry’s code of conduct.

"Where products are marketed as fresh and they contain aseptic juice, in
our view they breach the code that has been set by industry and line
themselves up for prosecution," Graeme said.

Plant manager for Nippy's Juice, Frank Morena, tells everybody his product
is fresh, until he is reminded that he uses aseptic juice, which can be
more than a year old.

"A small company like us has to compete with the multinationals. They use
more concentrate than we do," Frank refuted.

Nippy's do produce a juice free of aseptic, it's all orange. But, Frank
has trouble selling it at 20 cents more because consumers can't tell the
difference between aseptic juice and real fresh juice - because it isn't
labelled.

For now, Food Standards Australia allows producers like Frank Morena from
Nippy's to hide aseptic juice in their product without telling consumers,
much to the dismay of the ACCC.

"The ACCC would have a strong preference that ingredients like this are
marked on the packaging. But it is outside the jurisdiction of the ACCC to
require that to be included," Graeme said.

Foods Standards Australia New Zealand in conjunction with the government
can force producers to tell the truth. Citrus grower Ron Gray wishes
they'd hurry up.

--
Peter Lucas
Brisbane
Australia

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

"PL" > wrote in message
5...
> It's happening here, so it's undoubtedly happening everywhere. We are on
> family that is never buying supermarket "fresh juice" ever again.
>
> I'd rather get a bag of oranges and squeeze them myself.
>
[snip]
Also necessary if you want to avoid the high level of sugar
added to control the taste usually squeezed out of the rind
by machines.

Robert Miles

"Robert Miles" > wrote in news:a983o.43704
:

>
> "PL" > wrote in message
> 5...
>> It's happening here, so it's undoubtedly happening everywhere. We are
on
>> family that is never buying supermarket "fresh juice" ever again.
>>
>> I'd rather get a bag of oranges and squeeze them myself.
>>
> [snip]
> Also necessary if you want to avoid the high level of sugar
> added to control the taste usually squeezed out of the rind
> by machines.
>


Another interesting fact was that the people doing this add what they call
"Valencia Essence" to the stuff to make it more orange in colour, and to
make it smell and taste more like Valencia oranges.



"We'll also add a little highlighter to it, to give it a bit more flavour.
The highlighter is called Valencia Essence, it is a liquid that tastes
like Valencia orange," the whistleblower, who worked for National Foods,
claimed.

"When you buy fresh juice in winter, 20% would be fresh and the rest of it
would be aseptic and concentrate," the whistleblower claimed.


--
Peter Lucas
Brisbane
Australia

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.