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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!

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Food Fraud Survey

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.

Take the survey

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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.

fish species fraud

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.

 

 

 

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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.

 

food fraud definition

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.

More information and a copy of the report can be found here

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When the big boys get it wrong…

Coles has been caught breaching its own sustainable fish sourcing policy by selling yellow fin tuna.  Yellow fin tuna is classified as ‘near threatened’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural resources and generally considered to be a fish species that cannot be sustainably fished right now.

After being caught selling the home brand canned yellow fin tuna by journalists from Fairfax Media last week, Coles reported that those particular cans of tuna were from a certified sustainable fishery in the Maldives where the population of yellow fin is ‘doing really well’. It looks to me like Coles relied on the Marine Stewardship Council certification rather than cross-checking the species sections of their own sourcing policy.

Coles has more regulatory, purchasing and compliance resources than just about any other food business in Australia.  So if they occasionally make mistakes in their policies and procedures, what hope have smaller businesses got?

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