Have you ever been a victim of food fraud, either as a consumer or while working in the food industry? It’s likely that at some point you have paid too much for a ‘premium’ product that was not exactly what it should have been. Foods such as olive oil, organic products, fish and specialty beef products are commonly misrepresented to purchasers. Take the food fraud survey to find out it you have been affected.
A serial (cereal) offender is behind bars in Italy
News from Malta today tells the story of a serial food fraudster who has been detained over the export of counterfeit organic grains and oil seeds. Malta Today reports that 350 000 tons of corn, soybeans, wheat, rapeseed (canola) and sunflower seeds worth €126 million and sold as organic over a period of six or more years probably weren’t organic at all. Italian investigators found that the grains were grown in Moldova, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, certified as organic or bio by untrustworthy regulators in those countries and purchased by a Maltese company which then exported them to Italy.
The man behind the Maltese company is awaiting trial. Previously, he has been arrested over a shipment of GMO corn in 2014, implicated in counterfeit organic food scandals in 2011 and was tried for falsification of an invoice in 2010. Could we call him a cereal (serial) offender?
Chicken flavoured nail polish and other food trivia
It’s always a joy to stumble across new and silly food facts as I take my daily stroll through the huge inter-web-universe of food industry news. Here are my favourites from the last few weeks:
In Japan you can purchase sake-flavoured KitKats containing 0.8% alcohol. Because sake and milk chocolate have always seemed like a great match…?
Pink peppercorns are the berries of a Peruvian tree and not genetically related to other types of peppercorns, despite the fact that green, white and black pepper all comes from the same flowering vine (Piper nigrum). Green peppercorns are unripe berries, black peppercorns are dried berries and white peppercorns have had their dark outer husks removed prior to drying.
The famous fried chicken chain KFC plans to release flavoured nail polish that you can lick. It has made two flavours available for market testing in Hong Kong and residents of that city can choose which will go into production; Hot & Spicy or Original. This is not a prank; they really have developed chicken flavoured, lickable nail polish. And it comes in two colours.
Watermelons looked really weird in the 17th century. And probably didn’t taste that great. This painting by Giovanni Stanchi from around 1650 is of a watermelon of the day. Who says genetic engineering is a modern-day phenomenon; we have been doing it for centuries.
Animals known as bearcats or binturong in South East Asia have popcorn flavoured urine. Researchers confirmed this by squeezing 33 sedated binturongs, which are about the size of raccoons, to obtain samples for chemical testing. Yes; squeezing. The researchers published a paper in the prestigious journal Science of Nature which prompted one journalist to be tempted by the unfortunate pun ‘passing the popcorn’.
Verifying traceability; MSC certified seafood passes the test
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has published a report describing the results of a DNA survey on MSC certified fish from 16 countries.
Businesses that handle MSC certified sustainable seafood are required to comply with the MSC Chain of Custody Standard to ensure that they have effective traceability systems in place. This helps to ensure that the consumer receives fish that are from sustainable fisheries, as promised by the MSC sustainable seafood label. MSC conducts a survey every two years to verify the effectiveness of the standard and to ensure that distributors, processors and retailers trading in MSC certified sustainable seafood are complying with the standard.
The results of the latest survey are really positive. The MSC sampled fish and fish products carrying the blue MSC certified label from 16 countries. Of the 256 samples tested, only one of those was identified as being mislabelled. Upon further investigation MSC found that the mislabelled ‘Southern rock sole’ was in fact ‘Northern rock sole’; it was an accidental misidentification of two closely related species, rather than a deliberate fraud. So it seems that the MSC Chain of Custody Standard is working really well across the world.
Interestingly, the final pages of the report include a discussion about how the results compare with similar surveys conducted by other organisations. Those other surveys included species testing of many fish types, within many countries, mostly from retail outlets. The levels of mislabelled fish species were generally low in Europe, with more than 90% being of the samples being accurately labelled. The only countries that had less than 70% accuracy were Belgium, USA, South Africa and Canada. Sadly, the Canadian results were the poorest, with less than 60% of samples in that survey being accurately labelled. The Canadian results were also the oldest, being from 2011, with most of the European results from 2015. Perhaps seafood labelling in Canada has improved in the last five years, just as it has in Europe.
Fish pizza, from the things that make me go hmmmm files (a food scientist’s perspective)
Earlier this month, just in time for the Lunar New Year, Dominoes launched a fish pizza. The toppings? Fish-shaped fish sticks (fish fingers if you are Australian), pepperoni, green bell peppers, corn, lardons (bacon), and cherry tomatoes. Fish symbolise wealth and success in China but I’m not sure they belong on a pizza. Putting corn on a pizza is already bad enough. Hmmm…
Fish mislabelling; malicious fraud or sloppy supply chains?
Nice one, Food Standards Scotland.
What looked at first to be a number of cases of deliberate fraud was given some sensible attention and analysis by Food Standards Scotland (FSS), with unexpected results. The organisation surveyed fish products supplied to their public sector food outlets, including hospitals and schools, to get a snapshot of the degree of species mislabelling. Of the 264 samples tested, around 6% of those (15) were mislabelled.
Any mislabelling is a breach of trust and a breach of food laws, but a result of 6% is relatively low and not likely to have a large economic impact. Nevertheless, FSS investigated each of the incidences, retested products and spoke to the suppliers directly.
Product labelled as haddock was the type most often found have been mislabelled during the survey, with ‘haddock’ found to be another fish species in 8 of 50 samples (16%). As you would expect when considering fish species fraud, the most common substitute for haddock was a cheaper fish, whiting, the two types of fillets having similar appearance, flavour and texture. Interestingly, however, almost half of all the ‘fraudulent’ samples were in fact an expensive fish (haddock) mislabelled as a cheaper species (whiting or coley). Those results are obviously not ones you would expect to find when investigating fish fraud, and they are unlikely to be the result of any deliberate attempt to gain an economic advantage.
To the credit of the FSS they uncovered the cause of the mislabelling for most of the incidences; suppliers of the mislabelled fish admitted that they sometimes had trouble identifying incoming block fillets. Some also admitted that they were not adequately separating or labelling different fish species during processing, handling and packing operations. The suppliers in question have implemented improvements and have requested better labelling of their suppliers to prevent future occurrences; good news for the Scottish seafood industry.
Natural caffeine. From the things that make me go hmmm files (a food scientist’s perspective)
This afternoon I saw an advertisement for an energy drink that contains
- No Taurine (sounds okay to me) and
- Natural Caffeine.
Natural Caffeine. What is natural caffeine? Actually what is not-natural caffeine?
I did some research and it turns out that the term ‘natural caffeine’ is sometimes used to describe caffeine that has not been synthesised in a laboratory or chemical factory. Synthetic caffeine and caffeine from natural sources are chemically indistinguishable, so I am not sure why anyone would bother to make the distinction, but it does raise some interesting questions about the use of the word ‘natural’ in food and beverage marketing. This is becoming a hot topic in food labeling and regulatory circles, and one that is not going to go away. In fact, the USA FDA has embarked upon an ambitious project to define the term and provide guidance for food labels. We await the results with bated breath. In the meantime, I will stick to my favourite source of caffeine; natural, preservative-free black coffee.