Food Fraud Advisors

You are here: Home / Archives for coffee

by

How food fraud is uncovered; two cases of origin fraud

Origin fraud occurs when a food is misrepresented with respect to its geographical origin; it’s a type of fraud that can be categorised as ‘mislabeling’.

Examples of mislabeling include:

  • describing a fruit or vegetable as ‘organic’ when it was conventionally grown
  • cheeses and meats labeled as kosher or halal that are not
  • Spanish olive oil falsely declared as being ‘Italian’.  This is origin fraud.

Mislabeling is also called misbranding in some countries.  Because it is intended to deceive customers and consumers it is illegal under consumer protection laws and trade/contract laws just about everywhere.  Because almost every type of food fraud involves mislabeling to some extent, quoting statistics on mislabeling is difficult.  As an example, a botanical supplement labelled as 100% turmeric extract but that actually contains 15% filler is both mislabeled and diluted.  To make it even trickier, different organisations using different words to describe similar food fraud activities.  Learn more about classifying food fraud types in this great Food Safety Tech Article.  Suffice to say, mislabeling fraud is very common and, according to US Grocery Manufacturers Association, it affects around 10% of food products globally.

Coffee growers in Hawaii have launched a class action to protect their products

How do we expose origin fraud?  Typically, origin fraud is uncovered after authorities have been tipped off about suspect activity in a supply chain, either by people from within the supply chain or by competitors of the mislabeled product.   The evidence used to pursue the fraudsters often comes from either fraudulent documentation, or from testing of finished products.  This year we have seen an increase in the use of authenticity testing by representatives of ‘authentic’ brands to expose fraudulent products.  This is a trend that I expect to continue as test methods are improved, refined and can more easily be extended to assess specific product attributes.

I have been following this trend with interest and was reading, today, about alleged origin fraud in coffee in the United States. This is a case that is representative of the trend to use sophisticated test methods to authenticate finished product attributes.  Another recent example would be honey testing in Australia.  In the coffee case, growers from the Kona district of Hawaii have filed a lawsuit against retailers for allegedly selling ‘Kona’ coffee that does not contain a reasonable amount of coffee from the district. Kona coffee production is 2.7 million pounds, however more than 20 million pounds of coffee labelled ‘Kona’ is sold each year.  The plaintiffs claim to have analytical test results to support their claims.  Nineteen brands of coffee, sold by retailers including Walmart, Cosco and Amazon, have been named in the complaint.  Chemical testing technology underpins this current lawsuit, as it allows the coffee growers to show, for the first time, the actual Kona content of the coffee that is being allegedly mislabeled.  For this to be possible, the coffee growers would have had to organise for testing laboratories to create a database of chemical test results of authentic samples of Kona coffee.  Databases like this are used to model a product’s unique chemical fingerprint using sophisticated mathematical computations.  The test method can then be used to compare the ‘fingerprints’ of suspect brands against those of authentic products, such as Kona-grown coffee, and infer the amount of genuine material in each sample.  Developing databases for this type of testing is expensive and time consuming.  However, there are an increasing number of laboratories that have the machinery, skills and software to perform this work, so it is becoming more accessible to brand owners.

Specialty vinegars fetch high prices and can be vulnerable to economically motivated food fraud.

In cases that do not originate with product testing, it is activities in the supply chain that provide clues to origin fraud.  This month there have been reports of origin fraud for a specialty vinegar, Modena balsamic vinegar.  Modena balsamic is protected by a special geographical designation under European regulations.  According to these rules, Modena balsamic vinegar must be produced using grapes only from certain regions in order to be considered authentically ‘Modena’.  A massive fraud involving 15 million Euros worth of materials has been uncovered in Italy after a special operation by local authorities found that the wrong grapes were being used to produce this very expensive product.  Although operational details about this investigation are scarce, these types of actions by authorities are often initiated after authorities have received a tip off from someone connected with the supply chain.   Another example of such a tip-off includes this recent wine counterfeiting operation in which authorities became aware that a printing shop had received an order for 4,500 wine labels from a company that was not the brand owner.

More tip-offs and more testing are my predictions for 2019 and 2020.  These are going to lead to more investigations, complaints and enforcement actions against perpetrators of food fraud.  And that’s a win for everyone!

Want our help with a food fraud problem?

Contact Us for Confidential Advice

by

Food Fraud News – May 2017

European food supply at risk from climate change affects on other continents

A study that examined European water demand found the EU to be likely to be affected by droughts in other countries because of its reliance on certain food crops that do not grow in Europe.  They predicted that droughts in growing areas for almonds, pistachios, grapes, rice, soybeans and sugar cane would have serious impact on European supplies and prices.  Droughts are expected to occur more frequently with climate change.  The largest impact is expected to be on the European meat and dairy sector due to its reliance on soy for animal feed.  Increasing prices and factors that affect supply can increase the risk of food fraud, with food and feed that is imported from drought affected countries likely to become more vulnerable.

Condiments and sauces; counterfeiting operations, products uncovered more frequently

Another counterfeit condiment operation has been uncovered in Asia in recent months.  This follows an earlier discovery, in January this year of a sophisticated factory complex in China that was manufacturing a range of sauces and noodles and packing them with counterfeit branding for Maggi, Knorr and Nestle.  Fifty small factories were hidden in a residential area, and managed to produce goods worth $14.5 million per year, according to one estimate.  In Europe, counterfeit seasoning cubes were seized during a recent enforcement operation.  And there have been two recent incidences of salt fraud; one in Nigeria and one in Scotland.  Is condiment counterfeiting growing or are we just getting better at finding it?  Only time will tell.  What we do know for certain is that it is not only premium, luxury goods that are at risk of being copied.

Salt production, Mauritius

Coffee price volatility set to increase

Larger than usual volatility in coffee pricing is predicted for the coming year as weather events and an unusually large predicted crop of arabica in Brazil are expected to impact world markets.  In addition, the Honduran coffee harvest is at risk from a leaf mould disease.  The previous outbreak in that country had a lasting impact on the harvest.  Coffee is already at high risk of food fraud and increasing volatility in the markets in the short term is likely to increase the risk.  Long term predictions for coffee supply are already grim because of climate change’s effects on growing conditions.  Heavy disease burdens in key growing areas will exacerbate the problem and ultimately increase the supply problems worldwide, increasing coffee’s vulnerability to food fraud.

Coffee,authentic,fraud,horizon scanning
Increased volatility in coffee markets is predicted for the coming year

Vertical integration in the food supply chain in Italy

An Italian consumer group has warned that at least 5000 restaurants in Italy are run by the mafia.   The mafia in Italy are also said to be involved in food fraud within primary production, manufacturing and wholesaling sectors.  Any restaurant that is run by an organisation that has links to organisations that are perpetrating food fraud provides the perfect sales outlet for the fraud-affected food.  The foods are, in effect, exchanged for ‘clean’ currency from restaurant patrons, essentially laundering money derived from food fraud operations.  It has been reported that some of the mafia-run growing operations are being done on polluted land that is not safe for food production.

Get more news

Learn about the food fraud risks for hundreds of different products in our Food Fraud Risk Information Database, hosted by Trello.  It’s new, it’s free, check it out today.

food fraud risk database

 

 

 

by

Coming to a store near you….

Keeping abreast of food fraud and food safety news is a daily activity and one of my favourite work tasks.  This week, as I skimmed through food industry trivia and pondered the launch of chocolate cheese (seriously), the two most alarming and unusual food fraud incidents I came across were news of thirty five businesses who were caught by Chinese authorities adding opium to food and a British business that was prosecuted for selling ‘almond’ powder that contained peanut.  By the way,  you did see that correctly: opium.  And just for the record, opium is not a permitted food additive.  Peanut-contamination of anything is, of course, a very serious risk to the safety of allergic consumers and has resulted in deaths in recent years.  It’s tragic to see that this type of adulteration continues to occur.

Having digested thousands of words of information about prosecutions, investigations, trends in food fashions and the changing regulatory landscape, I began to notice some patterns and found a couple of big red flags for future risks of food fraud.

Halal

Halal certifications are increasingly needed for market access for almost every food type at both the retail and wholesale level.  A halal product is often indistinguishable from its non-halal counterpart which means that everyday consumers are not able to verify food sellers’ claims about halal status.  Falsely claiming halal for a food item is an easy fraud to perpetrate, especially during the retail sale of un-packaged food in restaurants and takeaway stores.  Halal fraud can be as sophisticated as forgery of certification documents accompanying bulk shipments of food or as simple as dishonest signage in a takeaway store.  There have been a number of incidences of halal fraud in the news lately and these are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg.  I see very high risks in the South East Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia; these being some of the world’s biggest markets for halal food and having variable and sometimes chaotic food supply chains accompanied by uneven regulatory enforcement.  However, halal forgery can happen even in the most sophisticated markets with a recent prosecution in the United Kingdom in which the fraudster is alleged to have netted a quarter of a million pounds.  With this kind of money up for grabs, you can expect halal fraud to continue.

Is this meat halal?

Probiotics

Probiotics are among the hottest food ingredients for the healthy eating market right now.  New technology is claimed to enable probiotic bacteria – good bacteria – to survive in an ever-increasing range of food types, taking them beyond traditional yoghurts and ‘Yukult’ style dairy drinks.  Probiotic foods command a premium price and, as with many of the most vulnerable food fraud targets, the probiotic components are indiscernible to consumers.  There is a real and growing risk that fraudulent claims will be made about the quantity and types of live bacteria in food products, with the possibility of both accidental and deliberate frauds.  Any food business can make a mistake with formulations and shelf life, leading to discrepancies between the quantity of live bacteria in the food and what is claimed on the pack.  Premium brand owners are less likely to risk their reputation with unsubstantiated claims and these businesses are more likely to have the in-house expertise and resources to properly verify their on-pack claims.  It’s the smaller food companies and newer brands that I worry about:  they are much more likely to find themselves inadvertently or knowingly selling ‘probiotic’ products that don’t live up to the marketing hype.

Cold Brew Coffee

Can you fake cold brew coffee?  Cold brewed coffee appears to be here to stay but it has a high price tag and would be easy to fake.  Could the average consumer taste the difference between conventional and cold-brew coffee?  I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t, especially when served icy cold or with lots of milk.  The production method for cold brewed coffee is slower than conventional brewing, which usually means more costly.  And that means food businesses could be tempted to cut a few corners.  Even hipster brands that build their messages around product authenticity can find themselves in a scandal when financial pressures increase, as was the case with an ultra-premium bean-to-bar chocolate brand recently.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few incidences of fraudulent claims about cold-brewed coffee hitting the headlines this year.

Cold brew coffee: hot food fraud risk