Food Crimes

The illicit, unwieldy international seafood trade and the hard-fought efforts to try to regulate it.

This time around we're investigating the rarified world of saffron—both as the world's most precious and valuable spice, and as a lesser-known commodity tied up in the nuclear armament dealings between the United States, its allies at the United Nations, and the ostracized outlier Iran, which produces the vast majority of the planet's saffron.

In the third episode of ZPZ’s Original Series Food Crimes, negligence at the executive level leads to salmonella-tainted peanut products and the death of nine people. Hundreds of others are hospitalized. The bill, all told, comes to roughly $1 billion. Stewart Parnell, as CEO of the offending Peanut Corporation of America, comes into the crosshairs of the Food and Drug Administration and federal prosecutors try him in criminal court, where he’s found guilty of seventy-plus crimes. The Department of Justice has recommended that he serve the rest of his life in prison, and on Monday, September 21, his sentencing hearing begins.

In the fourth episode of Zero Point Zero’s investigative series “Food Crimes,” we’re pulling back the curtain on how fake wine is created, brought to market, and abetted by the small, insular nature of the craft. The names Hardy Rodenstock and Rudy Kurniawan have become watchwords for the art and prosecution of wine counterfeiting, and the concern of many professionals is that in uncovering these fraudsters the world of fine collectible wines has only begun to scratch the surface… and that the next step for enterprising con-men is faking wines at scale.