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After Buitoni pizzas or Kinder chocolates, it is the turn of Oreo cookies to be at the heart of a health scandal. The Olam cocoa factory reportedly uses ammonia to darken the famous cakes.
It was the Dutch newspaper Noordhollands Dagblad which launched the alert. According to his investigation, the cocoa factory of the company Olam, located in the Netherlands, has been using ammonia for several years to artificially blacken Oreo cookies.
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An environmental and health scandal
While thousands of children eat the famous biscuits at snack time – and ammonia is recognized as a toxic substance – the director of Olam, interviewed by the Dutch site, is trying to find justifications for this process.
“Ofi (Olam) uses ammonia as an alkalizing solution for certain cocoa powders to modify the color or taste of the final product. There is no or very little ammonia left in the final product. Ofi mentions its use as a food additive in the technical information of each ingredient. I cannot comment on specific quantities“.
For its part, the manufacturer of Oreo cookies – Mondelez – also wants to be reassuring about the presence of “ammonium carbonate” in its products.
“The use of ammonium carbonate in food does not affect the quality or safety of the product”, assures the spokesperson of the multinational”Annick Verdegem.
Arguments that fail to convince local residents and environmental activists who see ammonia emissions escaping daily from the plant.
A process that the Environment Agency would have knowingly covered up
Worse still, according to Noordhollands Dagblad, the government knew about it.
“The (Dutch) Environment Agency concealed the addition of tens of thousands of kilograms of ammonia at the request of Olam“, underlines the Dutch newspaper.
It remains to be seen whether these accusations will be enough to convince the company to change its recipe.