Company’s founder heads to South America to find out how lead contamintated product

By GREG STILES
Mail Tribune

ASHLAND — Dagoba Organic Chocolate hired Jeff Williams away from Maranatha Natural Foods to give founder and president Frederick Schilling more time to scout for cocoa sources.

Just back from Venezuela, Schilling is returning to South America today on an unexpected trip to northeast Ecuador.

Schilling’s mission isn’t to secure a new source of organic cocoa, but to find out what contaminated roughly 40,000 pounds of his company’s product.

After getting confirmation of high levels of lead in three of its product lines from a Portland laboratory Friday, the highly acclaimed chocolate maker issued a recall. The products are: Eclipse and Los Rios chocolate bars and Prima Materia 2-pound cocoa bricks.

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The Los Rios bar, with a 68 percent cocoa content, has limited distribution because of its recent introduction, Williams said. The Eclipse, with an 87 percent cocoa content, is more easily replaced because it is a blend from multiple sources. The 100 percent cocoa content bricks are used for cooking.

Exposure to high lead levels on a routine basis can cause permanent damage to the central nervous system in children and fetuses.

Schilling and Williams said the recalled chocolate accounted for a minimal amount of the company’s production. Dagoba doesn’t reveal its annual production, but it’s less than a million pounds, Schilling said.

"This is an isolated situation and we take this matter extremely seriously and have taken immediate measures to remove all of these products from the marketplace as quickly as possible," Williams said.

Dagoba routinely tests all raw cocoa at point of origin and again after it arrives in the United States. Schilling and Williams said when the tainted cocoa was tested in Ecuador, there was no indication lead was above acceptable levels. It is not clear whether the tests in Ecuador were flawed or at what point the lead levels became unacceptable.

The tainted cocoa from the Los Rios region northeast of Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, was shipped to Southern Oregon during the fall and the recalled chocolate was produced and shipped from Ashland between November and March 24, when initial laboratory tests indicated a problem. The problem was confirmed on Friday.

Food Quality Labs Inc., formerly known as Food Quality Analysts, of Portland, handles hundreds — sometimes thousands — of food, drinking water and wastewater samples each month.

Chemist Melanie Zallee said the 37-year-old company’s testing is driven by its primarily Northwest clients.

"We only test samples that we receive," she said.

Recalled food products generally are returned to stores in full or partially full boxes, said Joe Baca, compliance director at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in College Park, Md. "I don’t recall people returning labels and getting their money back that way," he said.

Manufacturers may advise stores to destroy the recalled goods or send representatives to pick them up.

"There is no patented method," Baca said. "Part of the problem is that thankfully most firms don’t have recalls. So we try to give them as much advice through our district recall coordinators. I imagine recalls are terribly expensive."

Dagoba spokesperson Melissa Schweisguth said the company sent representatives to some local stores to retrieve recalled items on Sunday, while calling other area retailers and its distributor.

In fiscal 2002, Food Safety and Applied Nutrition counted 400 recalls accounting for 916 products. In fiscal 2005, recalls fell to 278 with 636 products. The center does not handle red meat or poultry.

Susan Smith, spokesperson for a chocolate manufacturers association in Vienna, Va., said the danger posed by the Dagoba products is minuscule.

Even so, "the safety and wholesomeness of our products is really important to the chocolate industry," Smith said. "If there is any possible issue, we do what we can to protect the consumer."

Smith said lead’s presence in raw food material is naturally occurring and likely comes from surrounding soil or water.

While single-origin chocolate bars have distinct flavors, there’s another significant benefit.

"It makes for a short supply chain and we’re able to find the source of problems such as this right away," Williams said. "If we used dozens and dozens of suppliers, it would be harder to isolate the problem. But even with our blends, we’re only talking a couple of different sources."

But there is a risk factor with single-source products as well.

"If you have a problem you can’t use that source any more," Williams said. "We’re definitely not going to use that (Los Rios) source until, if and when, we can prove this issue has been solved. Our hope is that when Frederick goes down there he can find and fix the problem. If he can’t, we will never use the source again."

Even as Schilling heads back south of the equator to problem solve, Dagoba is cranking out chocolate bars and bricks to fulfill previous orders.

"We’ve already got permission from the FDA to go back into production with reformulated bars," Schilling said. "We took out the offending raw material and are using different sources. The tests results came back very clean."

Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail business@mailtribune.com.

Recalled Dagoba products: