Food Fraud Advisors

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What to do About Food Fraud (USA)

I was talking to a new client the other day.  They are based in the United States and had discovered their competitors’ products contain undeclared ingredients.

What should they do, they asked.

There is no simple answer, especially not in the US where there is a patchwork of overlapping government agencies and rules to navigate.

Here’s the process I follow with this type of enquiry:

  1. Establish whether food fraud has occurred or not
  2. Categorise the fraud into one of two types
  3. Determine which regulations and agency(s) are relevant to the fraud
  4. Review the evidence – what made you think this was fraud in the first place?
  5. Decide whether more evidence is needed before pursuing the matter
  6. Choose who to tell, and in which order
  7. Choose how to progress after initial responses
  8. Inform interested parties
  9. Follow up if needed
  10. Execute further action if required

Example: hazelnut oil

We’ll use the example of a company that sells pure hazelnut oil and has discovered that their competitors’ products, labelled “100% pure hazelnut oil” actually contain significant quantities of sunflower oil.

1. Establish whether food fraud has occurred or not

Is this food fraud?  Yes, because consumers or customers are being misled by the labels, the mislabelling provides an economic benefit to the seller and the mislabelling is illegal.

2. Categorise the fraud into one of two types

At this step, I ask myself “Has the food itself been affected in some way – for example by adding or subtracting an ingredient – or not?”, and categorise accordingly.

In this example, the food contains an ingredient that isn’t expected or declared.  Therefore the food has been affected.  On the other hand, if the fraud was a false organic claim on the pack I would categorise that as not affected.

Why is this important?  Because it can highlight any urgent food safety issues and helps me to decide how/where to report and what evidence will be needed.

Speciality oils like hazelnut oil are vulnerable to food fraud, including dilution with cheaper oils like sunflower oil. Image generated with Canva AI

 

3. Determine which regulations and agency(s) are relevant to the fraud

For the hazelnut oil example, the two main agencies are the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA): the FTC because the oil is ‘misbranded’ according to the Food, Drugs & Cosmetics Act (misbranding means the label is false or misleading); and the FDA because they are responsible for ingredient lists, traceability and quality defects in foods.

4. Review the evidence

In this example, we knew that the fraud-affected products contained sunflower oil because of testing my client had performed.  Before we decide on a course of action we need to know more about this testing:

  • Who did the testing?  Is the testing laboratory independent?  Is it accredited for this scope?
  • What method was used? Has the method been validated or approved?  What is the accuracy and precision?
  • How were the samples chosen?
  • Does the laboratory impose conditions on the use of results and reports?
  • Would the results stand up in court if needed?
  • Have duplicate or repeat test(s) been done?  Alternative methods tried?

For the hazelnut oil, we concluded we can be confident that the results show evidence of fraud, however, an internal laboratory was used, and this means the results are not independent and would not stand up in court, or to media scrutiny.

5. Decide whether more evidence is needed before pursuing the matter

In this case, the test results are not independent, so further testing would be needed if the matter were to be pursued in a court of law, or presented to media outlets.

6. Choose who to tell, and in which order

Who you choose to tell about a fraud depends very much on your relationship with the suppliers of the fraud-affected foods.

For example, if you are a customer – that is if you purchase the fraud-affected products – you should talk to the supplier on the telephone to explain what you found and find out what they have to say.  It’s entirely possible that the company is a victim of their supplier and are unaware of any problem.

If you are a competitor it is best practice to let the company know what you found.  Again, they could be victims of their suppliers.  Give them the laboratory report (if an external lab) and tell them to direct any questions to the lab – if the lab is okay with this.  Let them know you intend to take the matter further.

You can report the fraud to enforcement agencies immediately after you have told the company, or wait to see how they respond.

If there is a credible food safety risk you must report the issue to the relevant authorities so that they can take action to protect consumers.

The hazelnut oil company is in the United States, so we decided to report the issue to the organizations below, after informing the owners of the affected brands.

7. Choose how to progress after initial responses

We decided that if the brand owners did not take action to correct the frauds and prevent them from occurring in future – for example by changing the claims on product labels, or by altering formulations – that we would commence a civil lawsuit against the brand owners.

A lawsuit would require us to obtain further evidence, including independent tests performed by an accredited laboratory.

8. Inform interested parties

We contacted the brand owners first, then the authorities, keeping accurate records of conversations and correspondence.

9. Follow up

We expect to have to follow up with the companies and the enforcement agencies, and have set timeframes for this.

10. Further actions

We hope to avoid taking legal action against the perpetrators in the civil courts, and would like to see the matter pursued by the FTC and the FDA in a timely manner.

We will repeat the tests in the internal laboratory in a few months’ time to see if there have been any changes to the formulation of the products.

Want help with a situation like this?

If can brief senior management, help formulate a plan of action, work with your laboratory and take charge of all the communications.

Get in touch with me

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Acronym Decoder

BRC and BRCGS: British Retail Consortium (superseded) and British Retail Consortium Global Standards.  The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is a group of British companies that published guidance and standards for food manufacturers, including a food safety standard that was also commonly referred to as BRC.  The standards owner is now known as BRCGS.

CoOL or COOL: Country of Origin Labelling.

EMA: Economically motivated adulteration or substitution. EMA is a subset of food fraud and is defined as the fraudulent, intentional substitution or addition of a substance, or dilution of a substance for the purposes of economic gain.  Non-EMA food fraud includes black market importation and trading of food and alcoholic beverages for the purposes of avoiding duty and taxes.

DEFRA: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a United Kingdom government department responsible for food production and standards as well as environmental and agricultural responsibilities.

FDA:  Food and Drugs Administration.  The FDA is the name of a regulatory body in a number of countries, including USA, Philippines and India.

FSA: Food Standards Agency, a United Kingdom government regulatory body.

FSMA: Sometimes pronounced ‘Fizzmah’.  Stands for Food Safety Modernisation Act (United States of America).

FSSC 22000: A food safety management system standard similar to ISO 22000 but with extra requirements incorporated to meet the requirements of a GFSI standard.

FSVP:  Standards for Foreign Supplier Verification Program.  It is part of the requirements of the US Food Safety Modernisation Act and applies to US importers of food and their suppliers.

GFSI: Global Food Safety Initiative.  The GFSI is a group of food companies whose mission is to harmonize, strengthen, and improve food safety management systems around the globe.  The GFSI provides direction and approval to organizations that create food safety management systems, so a GFSI-approved food safety standard is one that represents international best practice.  Well known GFSI standards include BRC, FSSC 22000 and SQF.

GMO: Genetically Modified Organism.

HACCP:  HACCP is a set of principles designed to control and prevent food safety risks during food production.  The principles of HACCP are codified (written down) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).  Download the 2020 revision of the HACCP Code here.

HARCP: Hazard Analysis Risk-based Preventive Control.  HARCP = food safety as legislated by the United States.  This acronymn being used by some in the USA when talking about the requirements of the recently enacted Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) in that country.  HARCP is claimed to differ from HACCP by including requirements for preventive controls.  Read more about HARCP here.

IA: Intentional Adulteration.  Within the US Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA), Intentional Adulteration specifically refers to malicious adulteration that is intended to cause widescale harm.  Learn more about intentional adulteration here.

ISO 22000:  ISO is the International Organization for Standardization.  They have thousands of standards across many different businesses, products and systems.  ISO 22000 is the ISO standard for food safety management systems.  Like other major food safety management systems it is based on the principles of HACCP.

NSF:  a pseudo-government organization head-quartered in the United States that is active in the area of food safety and sanitation.

PCQI:  Preventive Controls Qualified Individual.  The name of the role held by an expert food safety professional who meets certain requirements under the (US) Food Safety Modernisation Act.

SQF:  Safe Quality Food Institute.  The Safe Quality Food Institute owns and publishes a group of food safety standards also known as SQF that is a GFSI – approved standard.

USP: United States Pharmacopeial Convention.  USP is a non-profit organization that creates identity and purity standards for food ingredients and food chemicals, as well as for medical drugs.

TACCP: Threat Assessment Critical Control Point.  TACCP = prevention of malicious threats to food.

VACCP: Vulnerability Assessment Critical Control Point.  VACCP = food fraud prevention.  Learn more about TACCP and VACCP here.

Learn about Vulnerability Assessments, what they are and how to do them, here.

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Eight things you need to know about GM salmon

  1. AquAdvantage Salmon is the first transgenic animal to be approved for food in the USA. The US FDA announced that the salmon is safe to eat in 2015.
  2. A transgenic animal is one that has been genetically modified by adding genes from other species. In this case, the Atlantic salmon was modified with genes from Chinook salmon and ocean pout (a perch-like fish with good tolerance to low temperatures).
  3. The FDA review and assessment process took 20 years.
  4. The FDA’s safety assessment considered risks to people who are allergic to fish. The allergenicity of AquAdvantage Salmon was found to be no different to other types of salmon.
  5. The fish are only allowed to be raised in tanks in land-locked areas to prevent them from cross-breeding with other fish.
  6. The developers of the fish are promoting their environmental benefits, including less ocean pollution and a reduced requirement for wild-caught fish which are used as feed when farming salmon. The GM fish eat less and grow to market weight faster than conventionally farmed salmon.
  7. Food from transgenic organisms, including AquAdvantage Salmon has to be labelled as such in the United States.
  8. Michele Henry, Toronto Food Writer, describes the eating experience as “Exquisite”
Source: AquaBounty.com
Source: AquaBounty.com

Updated: November 2020.

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Five things every food safety professional should know about food fraud

1. Food fraud is in the spotlight

Food fraud has been around for thousands of years but has become more prominent in the food safety and food certification industry in the last few years, following the European horse meat scandal of 2013.  Although no food safety problems arose during that incident, it was realised that similar incidences could have serious impacts on food safety.  For that reason, food fraud prevention requirements were introduced into all major food safety management system standards between 2017 and 2020.

2. New terminology

Definitions related to food fraud and food integrity have been refined in the last five years and there is now consensus on the four key terms below, although the term food security still causes confusion.

food fraud,defense,safety,security

  • Food safety relates to issues of unintentional contamination, with the aim of reducing exposure to naturally occurring hazards, errors and failures in food systems.
  • Food fraud was defined by  Spink and Moyer (2011) as “a collective term used to encompass the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging; or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain.”  More recently that definition has been updated to capture all types of food crime: Food fraud is deception, using food, for economic gain (Food Fraud Initiative, Michigan State University).  Within food fraud there are types of fraud that involve tampering with the food by adulterating or diluting the food.  This type of fraud is sometimes called ‘economically motivated adulteration’ (EMA).  Other types of fraud that do not involve adulteration are also deemed to be ‘food fraud’.  These include black market and grey market sales, theft, illegal importing, avoidance of tax and counterfeiting.
  • Food defence is a term that has come to be defined as the effort to prevent acts of adulteration that are intended to cause harm to a food business or to consumers, such as acts of terrorism or attempted extortion.
  • Food security is unrelated to food fraud but is instead an issue of food supply and food access for populations who are under threat from food shortages.

Other terms to know:

  • Vulnerability assessments are assessments of vulnerability to food fraud, either at the raw material, product or facility level.  Within the USA the term vulnerability assessment can also refer to a food facility’s vulnerability to malicious tampering of product on its site, either by its own employees or external forces.   Learn more about vulnerability assessments.
  • Horizon scanning is the act of looking for and analysing threats and opportunities that will emerge in the medium to long term.  Within the food industry, horizon scanning means the act of collecting information about current trends and predicted incidences that could increase the likelihood of food fraud for a particular food material.  For example, climate change is likely to reduce coffee production which could drive up prices and increase fraudulent activity in that sector.
Coffee,authentic,fraud,horizon scanning
Coffee harvests are being affected by climate change

 

3. Food safety standards have become more rigorous

Food fraud prevention and mitigation measures are now a requirement of all major food safety management system standards.  The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), a group of food companies whose mission is to harmonize, strengthen, and improve food safety management systems around the globe, sets guidance for food safety standards.  Well known GFSI standards include BRC, FSSC 22000 and SQF.  Between 2015 and 2017, all GFSI food safety standards were updated to include requirements for food companies to perform a food fraud vulnerability assessment and have a food fraud mitigation plan in place.   Click here for the GFSI Food Fraud Position Paper.

The new requirements for vulnerability assessments and mitigation plans require more resources for most food businesses, particularly those with large numbers of raw materials and suppliers.

4. There are new regulatory requirements for food businesses

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in the USA has been implemented for most food businesses in the previous few years.  Within the FSMA rules, food businesses are required to address hazards from adulterants introduced for the purposes of economic gain.  These must be included in food safety hazard analyses and if hazards are found, preventive controls must be implemented.  This means that economically motivated adulteration (EMA), a subset of food fraud, must be addressed under the new FSMA rules.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) also includes specific requirements for ‘food defense’ which are aimed at preventing malicious adulteration and tampering as well as fraudulent adulteration.  This is known as the Intentional Adulteration (IA) rule.  The IA rule is being progressively implemented in the USA.  FSMA rules for IA will also be enforced internationally for all food facilities that manufacture food for export to America.  Click here for US FDA’s food defense guidance

food defense,vulnerability assessment,FSMA,
All American food companies will be required to have a food defense plan

 

5.  Detection of food fraud remains a challenge, despite new lab techniques

Our ability to detect food fraud has improved over the last few years, but challenges remain.  There are many technologies available, from traditional ‘wet’ chemical tests to spectroscopy and chromatography to modern forensic DNA methods.   Protein isoelectrofocusing (a type of electrophoresis) is a conventional test that provides information about the source of various milk proteins in a cheese and can be used to detect cows milk in “buffalo milk” mozzarella, for example.  PCR (polymerase chain reaction) techniques, in which a cow milk-specific gene is amplified and detected are being developed for cheese testing and they are claimed to be more specific.

Coffee variety testing has traditionally been done using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, a method that exploits the different amounts of chlorogenic acid and caffeine in robusta and arabica varieties.  However, a new method that exploits the different mitochondrial genetic markers in the two varieties will soon be able to achieve the same results quickly and easily in the field with ‘lab on a chip’ technology.

Researchers looking for fraudulent aloe vera can exploit its distinctive NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) profile, due to the position of acetate groups within a key polysaccharide in the plant.  The NMR profile represents a ‘fingerprint’ for aloe vera.

Another type of ‘fingerprinting’ is based on the spectra created by different ratios of stable isotopes.  For example, it is possible to tell the difference between corn-fed and wheat-fed chicken, using stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry by comparison with databases of reference samples.  This method has also been used to check provenance claims for meat and wine products.

Authentic beef mince
What meat is that?

 

Despite the surge in technology surrounding food fraud detection, it remains difficult to detect fraudulent adulteration unless you know what you are looking for.  As an example, DNA testing can be used to determine if beef mince has been made from a cow but can’t tell me whether it has been adulterated with undeclared beef offal.  Olive oil that is suspected of having been adulterated with other edible oil can easily be tested for such adulteration in a lab test, but verifying its country of origin is more difficult.  Adulteration of ‘arabica’ coffee with the cheaper robusta variety can be detected with a simple test but that same test will not disclose whether ground coffee has been adulterated with cheaper fillers such as corn, soybean or wheat, a practice which is common in some markets.  There are now a number of ‘fingerprinting’ techniques that are designed to ‘flag’ any sample that is not authentic, no matter what the adulterant, however they can only be used if there is already an extensive database of authentic samples with which to compare the suspect sample.  Australian honey brand owners who were caught with supposedly inauthentic honey in an NMR-based fingerprint test claimed that the database used in the testing, which was done in Germany, was not suitable for testing Australian honeys.  Read more about the Australian honey scandal.

We have a lot of tools in our arsenal to answer questions about fraudulent food but those tools are only useful if we ask the right questions.

Need to learn more?  Want practical advice from expert food scientists? Click here for a free introductory consultation.

 

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Love and other illegal ingredients; food fraud news for November

Fish fraud decreasing?

Great news for Canadians, with a recent ‘citizen science’ survey finding very low levels of fish fraud at the retail level.  The study was organised by SeaChoice with the support of  the University of Guelph Centre for Biodiversity Genomics’ Life Scanner program.  Participants used DNA kits to sample fish from local grocery stores across the country.  In all, 501 samples from 49 retailers and representing 46 species were tested.  Just 1% were found to be fraudulently mis-labelled, while 7% were not labelled according to the proper names defined by Canadian regulations.  These numbers are lower than expected and – we hope – the start of a trend towards better traceability and less fraud in the seafood industry.

Gorgeous, but toxic ‘silver’ sweets

Intricately decorated festival sweets in India have been a well-known food fraud risk for many years; unfortunately they are frequently found to have been coloured with cheap and toxic textile dyes rather than approved food additives.  On the eve of the Diwali festival this year, Indian authorities tested sweets and found they contained non-food colours.  In addition, the beautiful silver gilding on some sweets was in fact made from dangerous aluminium, rather than from silver, which is inert and safe to ingest.

Hot dogs in peril

Hot dog sellers in Belgium are worrying about the price of mustard, after the world’s largest producer of mustard seeds, Canada, reported a very small harvest this year.  It is only half of the previous year and the lowest volumes in 11 years.  This is expected to effect supplies and prices of mustard which will increase the risk of food fraud.

Red, red wine

Chapitalization – the act of adding sugar to the wine making process to boost final alcohol content, is the subject of a recent crackdown by Spanish authorities. Chapitalization is not permitted in Spain, although it is allowed in some wine growing regions elsewhere.

 ¡Ay no: carne de caballo

Despite being one of the best known types of food fraud, we are still finding undeclared horse meat in beef, including recently in Mexico.  Horse meat is not illegal in Mexico, however it is not supposed to be present in beef meat.  A recent study found it at rates of around 10% of ‘beef’ products purchased from public markets, street stalls, butchers shops and taco stands.  Worse still, more than half of the meat samples that contained horse DNA also contained clenbuterol, an illegal growth enhancer.

US FDA: not loving love

The US FDA has ventured into philosophical territory by sending a pubic warning letter to the owners of a food manufacturer in Massachusetts for mis-branding their granola by declaring that it contains love.  According to the FDA, “Love is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.” Oh FDA, you heart-breakers!