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Honey Fraud – Much Worse Than We Thought?

From the desk of Karen Constable, principal consultant at Food Fraud Advisors.

My daughter loves honey and eats a lot of it. She spent a few months in Europe last year – mostly in Spain –  and told me the honey there had no flavour.  She said it tasted like sugar water.

‘Honey’ that doesn’t taste like honey may have been diluted with water and adulterated with non-bee sugar syrups: food fraud.  Honey is one of the most fraud-affected foods on the planet, so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that “honey in Europe just doesn’t taste like honey”.

But I was surprised. Europe takes its honey seriously.  And it takes food fraud seriously, too.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear about flavourless probable-fraud-affected ‘honey’ in other parts of the world, but I was surprised to hear my daughter say it was “everywhere” in Europe.

Listen to this post on YouTube by clicking the preview below.

 

The last time I saw Europe-wide honey fraud results they were quite good.  For example, a honey-checking operation that was part of the famous Europol/Interpol anti-food-fraud activity, Operation Opson X, in 2021, found that of the  495 honey samples tested, 93% were compliant.  Separately, a European honey fraud survey in 2015 – 2017 reported only 14% ‘suspicious’ samples.Seven percent, fourteen percent, as non-compliance rates, they are hardly fantastic but they don’t match my daughter’s claim that all the honey she tasted in Europe was affected.

But new results have just been published for a multi-year European anti-honey-fraud operation and they are pretty bad.  Of the 320 samples tested in the operation, almost half were suspected of being non-compliant with the provisions of the European honey standard (the Honey Directive).

What is going on here? Why are these results so much worse than past surveys?

Firstly the samples that were tested do not represent the European-wide honey market.  The sampling focussed only on imported honey and only on adulteration with sugar syrups.

Secondly, the methods used in this most recent round of testing are almost certainly different from previous European surveys.  The test methods are only suitable to identify “suspicions of fraud” by looking for chemical markers of extraneous sugars (presence/absence only) and they are different from the officially-approved honey test methods.

The European Joint Research Council (JRC) says these methods are “the most sophisticated methods” currently available but they have not been validated and they are not part of the regulatory framework.

For this enforcement activity, the analytical results were used only as a tool to decide whether further investigations were needed to uncover fraud in the honey supply chain.  Further investigations included on-site inspections, examination of documents, computers and phone records.

Investigators reported that fraudsters appear to be deliberately adjusting the levels of adulterants so that they can evade border control checks.  The European Union’s Food Safety Commission says that officially-approved honey authenticity test methods are not keeping up with the fraudsters, claiming that analytical methods used for border control checks “lack sufficient sensitivity to detect low and intermediate levels of sugar adulterations”.

Something is just not right with honey in Europe

The investigations began more than eighteen months ago, but it appears likely that there are still high levels of fraud-affected honeys in the European market now. More than sixty percent of importers were found to have imported at least one suspicious consignment.

In fact, the European Food Safety Commission, last week reported that “there is a strong suspicion that a large part of the honey imported from non-EU countries and found suspicious by the JRC of being adulterated remains present and undetected on the EU market” (source).

Takeaways

Honey fraud is difficult to detect and expensive for government agencies to investigate.  Fraud perpetrators have been shown to use sophisticated systems to evade detection, and these investigations appear to show that importers and exporters are working together to defraud customers and governments.

If your business purchases honey, food fraud mitigation activities must go beyond checking documents or relying on letters of guarantee.

As a consumer, it is impossible to tell whether honey is fraud-affected or not, but if you suspect honey of being fraudulent, contact the brand owner as a first step and share your concerns.

…. Or you could seek out incense honey, a premium mono-floral honey from the incense flower in Portugal, for which all samples in a recent analytical test were found to be authentic 😊.

🍏 Source: https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-network/eu-coordinated-actions/honey-2021-2022_en 🍏

 

*** This post originally appeared in Issue #81 of The Rotten Apple Newsletter.  Subscribe to The Rotten Apple to get unique, helpful food safety and food fraud information direct to your inbox every Monday  ***

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5 Food Fraud Trends to Look Out For in 2023

Our Principal Karen Constable has been following food fraud news since 2015.  Every week she personally reads, watches and listens to hundreds of articles, posts and journals about food fraud.

Here’s what she is predicting for food fraud for 2023:

  1. Organic fraud in USA – (a little) less likely
  2. Waste disposal fraud
  3. Document fraud as a new area of concern
  4. Sustainability claims ‘fraud’ – more likely
  5. Authenticity testing – improving

1) Organic fraud

Awareness of organic fraud has been increasing rapidly everywhere in the world. In the USA, that increased awareness has been accompanied by growing recognition of problems with the National Organic Program (NOP). These problems are related to enforcement and coverage.  The NOP includes standards that define what can and cannot be labelled as ‘organic’, and it requires that products meet certain requirements in order to carry the USDA Organic seal.

There were a number of multi-year, very high volume frauds in the organic grain sector in the USA that have been discovered and prosecuted in recent years, including one perpetrated with corn grown in the mid-West and fraud in imported ‘organic’ soybeans. With some of those large operations exposed, the amount of fraudulent ‘organic’ bulk commodities should be reduced in the USA. The prosecutions may act as a deterrent to other would-be perpetrators.

The NOP rules have been strengthened so that they will apply to imported commodities and importing companies like brokers and traders.  They also require that the organic status of bulk food in non-retail containers is correctly identified with respect to its organic status. There have also been updates related to the qualifications of organic inspectors and the rigour of on-site inspections.

Although the new rules are at least one year away, the market for organic commodities has been ‘put on notice’ and this should reduce the amount of organic food fraud in the USA.

organic produce pesticide authentic fruit vegetable

2) Waste disposal fraud

Waste disposal fraud has (probably) been happening for decades, but we are becoming more aware of the risks.  Waste fraud takes many forms but a typical scenario is one in which a food company contracts a waste company to securely destroy and dispose of goods that do not meet quality or safety parameters so that they cannot be diverted back to consumers.  However when fraud occurs, the waste company sells the sub-standard food, or otherwise allows it to return to consumers.

In one recent example, damaged jars of food were diverted back to the legitimate marketplace by the company that had promised to destroy them (and issued a disposal certificate to the brand owner).

This type of fraud is not new, but awareness of potential fraud in the waste supply chain has increased.  At the same time, food companies’ supplier approvals programs are more likely to include waste contractors than previously.  This means that there could be less waste disposal fraud than before (hopefully!)

 

3) Food safety document fraud (a bigger worry than we first thought?)

Document fraud is nothing new. It is a key element in many types of food fraud.  Falsified laboratory reports, fake organic certificates and even fake disposal declarations are all examples of document fraud.

In the context of food fraud, document fraud is most likely to support a profitable fraud, such as passing off conventional soybeans as ‘organic’ so they can be sold for a much higher price.

In ‘normal’ food frauds, then, the document fraud is just part of the package, and the documents do not directly make the food vulnerable.

There is one class of food, however, that has a special – and perhaps easily missed – food fraud vulnerability.  These are foods that are not usually thought of as ‘high risk’ for food fraud, but that rely on authentic/true documents for critical food safety criteria.

An example is ready-to-eat cold, cooked chicken purchased by a sandwich manufacturer.  A faked expiry date or falsified microbiological result on the certificate of analysis would place the sandwich company and its consumers at risk of serious consequences.  Because the faked, forged or falsified documents in that scenario provide subtle economic advantages to the supplier, this type of scenario could be considered food fraud.

Such vulnerabilities could easily slip through the net of traditional food fraud assessments. For suppliers whose economic circumstances are getting tougher, the motivation to perpetrate ‘minor’ document frauds like falsifying microbiological tests could be getting stronger, potentially increasing the likelihood of such frauds occurring.

 

4) Problematic sustainability claims

Claims about the sustainability credentials of foods are on the rise, as consumers increasingly value such claims.  Unfortunately, many green claims made about consumer goods have the potential to be misleading.

A United Kingdom government survey found 40 percent of such claims were problematic because of either non-accredited, own-brand logos; non-disclosure of environmentally harmful practices or ingredients; vague language; or lack of evidence to support claims such as ‘eco’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘natural’.

Vague claims and own-brand logos do not necessarily constitute food fraud, however food businesses need to be careful about the integrity of the data they use to support claims they intend to make about their products or operations.

Claims about carbon neutrality, carbon net-zero and greenhouse gas emissions reductions need to be evidenced using data from the whole supply chain.  This is where food companies can be vulnerable.

If a food company’s supplier provides incorrect data related to the carbon footprint of the material or service being purchased, the outcome of any emissions calculations done by the purchasing company will be incorrect.  The result?  The food company could be guilty of accidentally misrepresenting its sustainability status.

Other fraud pitfalls for food companies include fraudulent certification schemes and logos used by their suppliers, and errors in interpreting or complying with the varying green claim regulations in different markets.

Read more about the risks that come with carbon-neutral claims in Issue 61 of Karen’s newsletter The Rotten Apple and about consumers’ confusion with sustainable seafood claims in Issue 63.

 

5) Authenticity testing – more accessible, better expertise

Laboratories continue to improve their authenticity testing services to support medium-sized food businesses with food fraud detection. The level of food fraud knowledge and expertise in the food testing industry is getting better and more tests are becoming available.

The Food Authenticity Network’s (FAN) Centres of Expertise Program is making valuable contributions to the expertise and accessibility of food fraud tests.  A FAN centre of expertise is a laboratory or academic institution with expertise in one or more types of authenticity tests.

 

This article originally appeared in The Rotten Apple newsletter on 20th February 2023.

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Ten Years After Horsegate – A Decade to Celebrate

The horsemeat scandal of 2013 prompted action from the food industry and (some) governments against food fraud.  Ten years later, have we made progress?  Yes!

The United Kingdom created the Food Industry Intelligence Network, the Food Authenticity Network, which is now global, and the National Food Crime Unit (UK) on the recommendations of Prof Chris Elliott in his review of the crisis, which was commissioned by the UK government.

Chris recently wrote about the progress we have made on food fraud in the past decade in New Food Magazine.  He is positive about the gains we have made since 2013.

“The response from industry and government to defend the nation against fraudsters and indeed organised crime in the food sector has been enormously beneficial and makes life far more difficult for criminals.” Chris Elliott writing in New Food Magazine

We have made great progress since 2013, but it’s easy to forget how far our industry has come in our fight against food fraud. We are now paying more attention to food fraud and we are much more aware of its potential to hurt consumers and brands.  There are more tools and technologies available to food businesses to detect and deter food fraud than in 2013.  Analytical test methods, equipment and expertise are (slowly) becoming cheaper and more accessible.

Back in 2013 species identification tests were not routinely performed on red meat – the horsemeat-for-beef issue was only discovered because a sharp-eyed food inspector in Ireland noticed discrepancies on the labels and cartons of frozen “beef” at a small import-export business. At the time, the head of the Irish Food Safety Authority (FSAI) was “astounded” and thought there had been a mistake in the testing when the first sets of results were received, which showed almost 30 percent horsemeat in the “beef”.

These days it’s easy to have meat tested to determine its species and there are cost-effective test kits available for both raw and cooked meat.

However, the ‘bad guys’, as Prof Elliott says, won’t stop trying to make money from food fraud.  It can be very profitable and it carries a low risk of prosecution and punishment compared to other nefarious activities like smuggling drugs across international borders. One commentator estimated that it is three times more profitable to make and sell ‘fake’ olive oil than to smuggle cocaine (source).

In recent years there have been frequent claims in the media that food fraud is getting worse or is an increasing problem, but there is no evidence to support those claims. Food fraud is, by its nature, difficult to measure. As an industry, we are certainly talking about food fraud more, and there are more frequent reports about food fraud, but this doesn’t mean it is more prevalent.

We do need to remain vigilant, of course, because food fraud is not going away. One risk is that as big food companies and wealthy countries pay more attention to food fraud, the fraudsters will increasingly target commodities, companies and regions where there is less oversight – the “low-hanging fruit”.  These are the areas that are increasingly at risk as well-resourced companies increase scrutiny of their supply chains.

In some regions, where consumers and businesses are experiencing economic hardship, there is increasing motivation for previously legitimate food businesses to “cut corners” and for consumers to accept food from questionable sources and this also increases the risks.

Takeaways

As an industry, we are more aware of food fraud than before the horsemeat scandal, and we now have better tools and systems for keeping our consumers and our brands safe.

However, with well-resourced food companies working harder to deter and prevent food fraud in their supply chains, other businesses in the food sector will become more attractive targets for bad actors.

Don’t let your food company be the “low-hanging fruit” for food fraud perpetrators; keep being vigilant about the risk of food fraud in your supply chain and within your own company.

*** This post originally appeared in Issue #72 of The Rotten Apple Newsletter ***

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Food Fraud in Food Additives

Food additives such as flavour-enhancers, gums, enzymes, emulsifiers, stabilizers, anti-caking agents, anti-oxidants and non-nutritive sweeteners are a bit of a “black box” when it comes to food fraud.  There are few records of food fraud in food additives in our Food Fraud Risk Information (Trello) Database, with the exception of vanilla extract flavouring, which has more entries.  However, just because we don’t have many public records for food fraud does not mean that it does not sometimes occur in food additives.

Food fraud problems with food additives might be less likely to become public knowledge because they are less likely to cause serious food safety issues compared to other food components, due to the tiny concentrations at which additives are present in finished products.  In the absence of a food safety incident or food recall, it is less likely that a food fraud will become public knowledge.

Food fraud in food additives might be easier to detect than food fraud in other ingredients.  For example, if a food additive was fraudulently diluted with a cheap filler, it would not perform as expected in a recipe, which would alert the food manufacturer to a problem.

Many food additives (excluding flavours) have short(ish) supply chains compared to other food types, which reduces the chances of fraudulent tampering with the product.

Fraud in food colourings

During July 2022, there were two border rejections for food colouring additives that contained unauthorised colouring agents.  The border rejections occurred in Europe.  The food colours originated in India.  It is not known whether the unauthorised components were present as a deliberate deception – that is food fraud – or if the importer was unaware of their regulatory status in the European Union. Links can be found in the food fraud incidents section.

 

Image: Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

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Important Announcement About the Food Fraud Risk Information Database on Trello

On 1st September 2022, there was a major change to Food Fraud Advisors’ Food Fraud Risk Information Database on Trello.

Changes to the Database

After five years of providing free, 100% open-access food fraud information to the international food community, in August 2022 we made the difficult decision to change the content we publish on the Trello board.

From 1st September 2022, users of the Trello board will see a major change.  The database will continue to be updated with information for individual foods/ingredients, but we will no longer be providing (close-to) real-time food fraud incident news.   This means that separate cards for each individual food or raw material will continue to be updated when new risks or new emerging food fraud trends become known, but lists of incidents of food fraud will no longer be published on the board.  The “Recent Incidents” columns have been discontinued and the final column was August 2022.

 

Changes to the Food Fraud Trello Board

 

What to do Now

Keep using the Trello board to research food fraud risks for foods, ingredients and materials.  Click on the cards for individual food types to see the risks.

For recent food fraud incidents, find a new source of up-to-date information:
1. Sign up to a paid food fraud/food safety alert service like FoodChainID’s HorizonScan; or
2. Perform your own searches online; or
3. Sign up for a free service (the JRC Food Fraud Monthly Reports are good);
4. Or, to retain access to our expertise in food fraud incident reporting, you can subscribe to Karen Constable’s newsletter, 🍏 The Rotten Apple 🍏.  It’s full of awesome food safety and supply chain news, and (for paying subscribers), food fraud incident reports, just like the ones that were previously published on the Trello board.

Food fraud incident reports will also be appended to the downloadable offline ‘snapshots’ of the database, which you can purchase from our website for US197.  We publish a new downloadable ‘snapshot’ six times per year.

Summary

❌ Recent Incidents Columns (Lists) have been discontinued

✅  Individual cards continue to be updated with information about food/ingredients/materials when new information becomes available

✅  Get recent food fraud incidents from 🍏 The Rotten Apple 🍏 newsletter, or by purchasing a downloadable, offline snapshot of the database, or by signing up for an alternative source of food fraud information, such as HorizonScan.

If you’ve got any questions, contact us.