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Influence of the COVID pandemic on food fraud

Is food fraud going to increase because of the pandemic?

Karen Constable of Food Fraud Advisors, thinks that it probably will.  Here’s why.

Food fraud is driven by the desire for economic gain.  Always.  That is the definition of food fraud. Someone who tampers with food for other reasons – say by adding poison to scare consumers – is not committing food fraud.  In the food industry we consider tampering for malicious purposes an issue of ‘food defense’ not food fraud.

So, food fraud perpetrators seek economic benefits when they commit fraud, which most commonly manifests as an attempt to receive more money when a food is sold.  As an example, if a seller of ground turmeric adds a small amount of bright yellow lead chromate to a sack of poor quality turmeric, the brighter colour might mean that he receives more money than he would for a sack of pure, low-grade turmeric.  He gains a direct financial benefit when he commits that type of food fraud.

In addition to direct economic gains, there are less direct methods that criminals use to derive financial rewards from food fraud, such as by avoiding taxes and duties, or by acting dishonestly to fulfill customer orders so as not to lose their business.

One such fraud occurred in Canada in 2013 and 2014 when a fresh produce supplier was unable to source locally-grown cucumbers for their customers.  They instead purchased cucumbers from Mexico and relabelled the cartons with ‘Product of Canada’ before dispatch.  The company was later fined $1.5 million by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and a further $3.2 million by the The Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers association.

In addition to the desire for economic benefits, for fraud to occur there also needs to be opportunity.  Current events in the global food market and in the wider economy are increasing both the desire for economic gains and also the number of opportunities to commit food fraud.

Direct economic pressures on food sellers

In 2020, most parts of the world are facing extreme economic downturns.  The economic situation arising from the pandemic can reasonably be expected to increase criminals’ motivation to commit food fraud for the purpose of increasing profits directly.  In addition, we are already experiencing shortages in supply chains that will result in food suppliers experiencing extra pressure to deliver products to their customers.  As a result, it is reasonable to expect that there may be an increase in frauds committed for the purpose of retaining existing customers, or even gaining new ones, by supplying goods that are not easily available.  Companies may be tempted to take short cuts or turn a blind eye to things that do not appear quite right when they source food and ingredients.

Food manufacturers are under pressure during the pandemic

 

Increased opportunities for criminals

Disruptions in food supply chains caused by the pandemic have provided new food fraud opportunities for criminals.  These new opportunities can be organised into three loose groups; excess products, reduction in oversight and changed buying patterns.

Local oversupply of certain food types

Unusual excesses of supply have affected numerous food types and sectors since the pandemic began.  Examples include an overabundance of keg-beer in Australia, that was not consumed because bars were closed;  a glut of live pigs in the United States after pork processors shut down; excess quantities of milk that had to be dumped by dairy farmers.  In the United Kingdom, suppliers are concerned with an oversupply of expensive cuts of meat that would usually be consumed in restaurants or special family events; consumers are instead buying cheaper cuts to cook at home, leaving the more expensive parts of the animal unpurchased.

Wherever there are unusual patterns of oversupply, there are opportunities for fraud perpetrators to make use of the cheap and readily available excess foods for fraudulent purposes.  One such fraud of this type has occurred in the United Kingdom in recent years, where cheap, abundant beef has been used to replace some or all of the lamb in dishes sold by food service outlets.

Challenges with oversight

The pandemic has, to date, had a massive impact on the ability of governments and private entities to inspect, audit and test food for authenticity and safety.  Lockdown and social isolation rules have prevented audits and inspections, while economic factors have led to cuts in funding and staffing levels in inspection agencies.  In Europe, there have been changes to food, veterinary and phytosanitary inspections.  In the United States a consumer group has claimed that the Department of Agriculture’s new rules for swine fever inspections are inadequate to protect humans.  There have also been reports of problems at ports in Europe that have affected inspection protocols.

Within the food manufacturing sector, businesses are struggling to operate properly due to stay-at-home rules, which have affected staffing levels.  Reductions in on-site staff numbers can hamper a manufacturer’s ability to inspect incoming materials or to properly assess new suppliers for their food fraud and food safety risks.  In the longer term, cost-cutting measures in economically impacted businesses may reduce their ability to perform food authenticity testing, which can be expensive compared to other food tests.  Together, the reduction in personnel resources and authenticity testing leaves manufacturers more vulnerable to inadvertently purchasing and using fraudulent food ingredients.

Purchasing behaviour

The pandemic has resulted in significant changes to purchasing behaviour across the whole food supply chain.  Online retail food purchases have increased sharply in the first half of 2020.  Food sold online has frequently been accused of being less safe and subject to less oversight than food sold in ‘brick and mortar’ stores.  In May 2020, online-sold curry was recalled in Britain after it was found to be adulterated with an illegal dye.  In the same month, consumer group Which reported that it had found banned childrens’ foods for sale on Amazon.

Some food types have experienced a sudden and unexpected jump in demand.  In March 2020, Nestle reported its best sales growth in five years, as more people purchased food to cook and eat at home.  Hersheys reported a doubling of its e-commerce sales for March 2020.  The defence forces in South Africa experienced an unexpected demand for soldiers’ ration packs, which were needed as personnel were deployed to assist with infection control efforts.  That sudden demand might have contributed to a reported incidence of expiry date tampering that affected ration packs for South African soldiers.

There is evidence that the pandemic’s effect on global supply chains has already changed attitudes to importing and exporting food, with local food being favoured by both consumers and governments.  This has been termed ‘food trade nationalism’.  Such nationalism might provide more incentive for criminals to fraudulently mis-represent imported produce as being locally grown or produced.

Food trade nationalism is a risk to importers and exporters and may increase the likelihood of fraudulent mis-representation of geographical origin of some foods

 

It is also reasonable to expect that the current economic and trade environment will result in governments expanding food subsidy schemes to help protect staple foods in developing countries.  Subsidy schemes can be defrauded by corrupt food producers, such as occurred with some fruit growers in Sicily in 2017 and with shrimp export subsidy scams in China in 2015 and 2016.  Investigators have already uncovered corruption related to the pandemic in Uganda, where government officials were arrested over fraudulent activities related to procurement of maize flour and beans for COVID food relief.

What’s the good news?

The good news is that producers, governments and not-for-profit organisations are working together to get excess food to people who need it.  Ohio dairy farmers are turning their excess milk into cheese for charities; the USDA is purchasing unwanted vegetables from farmers for donation to food banks and New York has donated money to food banks to purchase cheese, yoghurt and butter made from excess milk.   In Boston, a brewery is using its unwanted beer to make enough ethanol-based hand sanitizer to clean five-hundred thousand hands every week.

Hand hygiene awareness has improved dramatically and food safety experts hope that this will result in long term improvements in hand washing compliance in the food and health care industries.

There are now improved online training options and technology-enabled remote audit options for businesses located outside of major cities and towns, making life easier for our country colleagues.

Finally, food safety culture leaders have been applauding the renewed calls for rules that grant paid sick leave for food handlers, in those jurisdictions where such protections are not yet in place.

What can you do?

Food businesses are at increased risk from food fraud in these difficult times.  Food fraud criminals are more likely to target businesses that have less checks and systems in place, seeking out the ‘low hanging fruit’.  Therefore, even a small amount of increased vigilance and care can reduce the risk.  Now is the time to review food fraud vulnerability assessments and update mitigation plans.  Try these activities to help protect your business from food fraud:

  • Seek out (and properly check) extra approved suppliers for critical raw materials, ingredients and products.
  • Consider sourcing commodities that are used in your key ingredients; they could be used to provide to your suppliers if the suppliers experience problems with procurement.
  • Wherever possible, do not use the pandemic as an excuse to avoid performing internal audits or supplier audits.
  • Reassess your supply chain in light of the new economic climate, focussing on the people in the supply chain as well as the business entities. The aim is to identify suppliers that might be under financial pressure and people with a history of questionable business dealings.  Check business registers and publicly available information such as old newspaper articles for any mention of fraud, bankruptcy, court cases or prosecutions.
  • Consider creating a system that allows your employees to anonymously report suspicious activities within your business. This can help reduce the likelihood of theft of finished products or materials from within your own facility or the downstream supply chain.

Are you struggling with teleconference training?  Learn how to get your company’s old face-to-face training online, fast here.

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Learn the lingo; food fraud terms explained

Food fraud occurs when food or drink is sold in a way that deliberately misleads or deceives consumers or customers for financial gain (Food Fraud Advisors, 2015)

(other definitions)

Food fraud occurs in two different forms:

1. Fraudulent activity that does not involve tampering with the food itself:

This includes activity such as avoidance of taxes, duties and quota restrictions (fishing), fraudulent paperwork such as forged importation documents, misrepresentation of origin, changing best-before dates and counterfeiting of popular brands.

2. Adulteration of food for economic gain:

This is sometimes referred to as economically motivated adulteration or EMA.  In this phrase, the word ‘adulteration’ is used to encompass many types of tampering, such as adding unauthorised substances, substituting undeclared substances for genuine components of a food or diluting a food product with cheaper substances.

Food fraud is a type of food crime, with food crime including food fraud and other activities such as the use of food shipments to mask drug trafficking and money-laundering through the trading of food and food commodities.

food fraud,defense,safety,security

Food fraud and the risks it presents to the food industry is a separate subject to food safety, although fraud-affected food can be unsafe.  Food safety relates to unintentional contamination of food and the presence of naturally occurring contaminants.

Food defence (food defense) 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, as defined by the World Health Organisation exists “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”.

Risk or vulnerability?  In the language of food fraud, the term risk is usually replaced with the term ‘vulnerability’, so food standards bodies are increasingly talking about vulnerability assessments rather than risk assessments.  ‘Vulnerability’ is used because food fraud ‘risks’ do not exactly fit with the accepted definition of risk as something that has occurred frequently, will occur again and for which there is enough data to make quantitative assessments.  Vulnerability is a better term for food fraud, due to the fact that the ‘risk’ of a specific fraudulent activity occurring cannot be quantitatively assessed.

Horizon scanning is another term that has been co-opted to the language of food fraud.  Horizon scanning is the act of looking for and analysing threats and opportunities that will emerge in the medium to long term.  It is used across many industries, including the financial and health care industries.  Within the food industry, horizon scanning refers to the act of collecting information about current trends in food production and predicted incidences that could increase the likelihood of food fraud for a particular food material.  For example, climate change is likely to affect coffee production which could drive up prices and increase fraudulent activity in that sector.  Click here for the complete low-down on horizon scanning.

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.

Intentional Adulteration:  Although food fraud activities often involve the intentional adulteration of food with unauthorised substances, within the food safety industry, Intentional Adulteration has recently been given a more specific meaning.  And it is not related to food fraud at all.  It is related to food defense, and more specifically to activities intended to cause wide scale harm to consumers.  There is a rule within the USA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), that addresses these activities.  It is known as the Intentional Adulteration rule.  According to the US FDA (2019), Intentional Adulteration is the deliberate contamination of food with a biological, chemical, radiological, or physical agent by an individual or group of individuals with the intent to cause wide scale public health harm.  How to protect against intentional adulteration. 

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Secrets of the horsemeat scandal

How did the enactment of an obscure transport law in Eastern Europe change the face of food manufacturing forever?  Karen Constable investigates the link between Romanian road rules and the horsemeat scandal.

More than six years after it first made headlines, the series of incidents that became known ‘horsegate’ continues to impact the global food industry.  It began in January 2013, when Irish authorities revealed they had discovered horsemeat in burgers that were supposed to contain 100% beef.  The discovery sparked a frenzy of testing and soon horsemeat was being discovered in dozens of different products in countries all over Europe and beyond.  The sheer scale of the contamination sent shock waves through the food manufacturing world.  Occurring five years after the melamine in milk powder scandal of 2008, which sickened over 300,000 babies in China, this incident was unfolding much closer to home for food manufacturers in Europe.  It was a wakeup call for our industry: we could no longer pretend that food fraud of a similar scale and impact as the melamine milk scandal could not happen in the western world.

Numerous massive recalls

The scandal resulted in market withdrawals of tens of millions of food products across Europe, millions of euros of lost business and multiple prosecutions.  Consumers’ trust in manufactured food plummeted and sales of frozen hamburgers and frozen ready meals dropped by 43% and 13% respectively in the United Kingdom in the month following the first product withdrawal.

Multiple investigations

Despite some media reports claiming that the first horsemeat discovery was the result of ‘routine’ testing, it is now known that the scandal was uncovered almost by accident.  As strange as it may seem to the wider community, it is unusual for food manufacturers and regulatory authorities to test foods for materials that are not expected to be present.  This is, of course, how the perpetrators of the Chinese melamine fraud could conduct their activities on such a large scale for what is thought to be a significant length of time.  The original horsemeat tests were conducted by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland because a sharp-eyed inspector had noticed a discrepancy between packaging and labelling of frozen meat.

As the investigations began it became apparent that law enforcement and regulatory authorities were ill-equipped to manage the complex cross-border issues that arose.  Supply chains seemed hopelessly complicated to unravel, with on-paper ownership of meat often disconnected from the physical whereabouts of the food.  By the time the scandal was declared over, investigators had identified at least three entirely separate supply chains involving different slaughterhouses, traders, processors and criminals.

Beef an easy target

Horsemeat and beef meat are similar in appearance, texture and flavour.  Yet the European market for horsemeat is relatively small compared with beef; it is not consumed by people in many Western European cultures. For unscrupulous merchants, however, horsemeat’s abundance and low price made it the perfect substitute for beef.   With access to a cheap, abundant adulterant, the criminals appeared to have an easy job of it.  It was so easy, in fact, that swapping horse for beef appears to have been a long-term business plan for at least one of the meat traders involved in the scandal, Jan Fasen.  Fasen had been convicted and jailed for a similar fraud in 2007.  The name of his company, Draap, is the Dutch word for horse spelt backwards.

In 2019, Fasen and his partner Hendricus Windmeijer were convicted of false labelling by a court in Paris for their role in the supply of 500 tons of meat to ready-to-eat meal-maker Comigel in France in 2012 and 2013.

Complex supply chains

Much of the horsemeat found in the affected products originated in Romania, the by-product of a unique set of circumstances which affected the availability and price of horse meat in that country.  Six years prior to the scandal, a law had been passed banning horse drawn vehicles from the streets of cities and towns in Romania.  Within a few years there was a surplus of unwanted horses, with abandoned animals roaming city streets and parks.  The horses were rounded up and exported to slaughterhouses in neighbouring countries where they were slaughtered for legitimate human and pet food.  By 2007, however, concerns about the spread of equine infectious anaemia, a disease which was endemic in Romania, resulted in a ban on the trading of live Romanian horses.  With live exports stopped, there was nowhere for the horses to go.  Enterprising local businessmen built their own slaughterhouses in Romania and began to export horse meat to Europe.

Draap Trading, a company operated from Belgium and registered in Cyprus, was among those that purchased Romanian horsemeat.  It shipped the meat to the Netherlands where it was re-labelled as beef.  From there it was sold to legitimate meat processors, including one in France who supplied the factory in Luxembourg that manufactured lasagne and spaghetti bolognese for Findus and Aldi.

Separately, a French meat processing company, À la Table de Spanghero was also purchasing horsemeat from Romania and selling it to food manufacturers labelled as beef.  The former director and manager of Spanghero were convicted for their crimes in Paris in April 2019, with the former director being jailed for his role in the saga.

Romania was not the only source, however: the burgers at the centre of the initial discovery in Ireland contained horsemeat that came not from Romania but from Britain, Germany and Poland, via another Dutch trader, Willy Selten.  In 2015 Selten was jailed for 2.5 years for crimes related to the fraudulent supply of horsemeat in 2011 and 2012.  In November 2016 he was ordered to pay €1.2m – the estimated proceeds of his crimes – to the Dutch government.

A long history of horsemeat adulteration?

Given the history of Selten and Fasen, it seems likely that undeclared horse was present in the European food supply for many years, remaining undetected and causing no apparent harm to consumers.  We will never know whether those responsible considered the safety of consumers when planning their crimes.  We do know that unsafe adulterants are more likely to be detected, which makes them less attractive to fraudsters.  Certainly, in the melamine scandal in China, just a few years prior, consumer harm played an important role in the detection of the fraud.  In that case, it is likely that low levels of melamine had been added to milk powder and other products for many months or years without causing any immediate or obvious harm to anyone.  It is thought that the concentration of melamine in baby formula increased in 2007 and 2008 and it was the higher levels that caused kidney problems in babies.  The fraud was uncovered by authorities investigating the illnesses.  Perhaps the extra melamine had been added by mistake, or perhaps the fraudsters got greedy.  Either way, the adulteration was costly for the criminals as well as their victims: two of the people responsible were executed by firing squad in China in 2009.

During the horsemeat fiasco, and to the relief of the entire industry, no person was sickened or injured by the presence of horse in ‘beef’ products.  There was, however, a major health scare: horsemeat can contain veterinary drugs, including phenylbutazone – “bute”, which can be harmful to human health.  It was a lucky coincidence that the overwhelming majority of the contaminated products proved not to contain phenylbutazone.

From horse and beef to chicken, donkey and buffalo

As investigators worked behind the scenes, public events in the European food industry took on the appearance of collapsing dominoes: first was the withdrawal of 10 million burgers by Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Dunnes Stores and Iceland in United Kingdom.  Tesco lost £300m in market value overnight.  In the following weeks, Asda also removed tens of thousands of products from its shelves; Tesco and Aldi extended their withdrawal from burgers to ready meals; Waitrose withdrew meatballs because of fears they might contain pork; slaughterhouses in Yorkshire and Wales were raided by regulatory authorities; the scandal spread to France and multiple arrests were made on both sides of the English Channel.

By the end of March 2013, authorities had found horse labelled as beef in three Polish factories; equine DNA had been found in chicken nuggets in Greece; water buffalo and donkey had been found in South African burgers and more big brands, including Ikea, Birdseye and Nestle had been affected with their products withdrawn from markets in Cyprus, Belgium, Spain and Czech Republic.

By year’s end, Tesco’s annual profits had fallen by 52%.  Consumer trust in large food manufacturers and retailers was at an all-time low: British consumer organisation ‘Which?’ reported that sixty percent of consumers had changed their shopping habits because of the scandal.

Standards updated

The British government commissioned Professor Chris Elliott to review and report on the implications of the horsemeat contamination for the British food industry.  The Elliott review, as it became known, resulted in the creation of a special food fraud crime unit in that country and the development of a range of other collaborative enterprises across Europe including special functions within the European Joint Research Council (JRC) and food-focussed operations by Interpol known as Operation Opson, now in its sixth year.

The food safety community, initially shocked and alarmed at the potential safety implications of the adulteration soon began a period of discussion and introspection, which often centred around the unspoken question ‘What if the meat had been dangerous?’.  The scandal broke at a time when the GFSI food safety standards were consolidating their revered positions at the pinnacle of ‘best practice’ manufacturing: the standards were being strengthened, lengthened and broadened.  Audit durations were increasing, auditor qualifications and certification systems had become more stringent and standards for packaging, storage and distribution had been upgraded.  And yet these GFSI-endorsed food safety management systems, considered to be the gold-standard for food manufacturing and administered with the strictest oversight, had revealed an Achilles heel the size of Bucharest.   The GFSI promptly created the ‘Food Fraud Think Tank’ to address the gaps and suggest solutions.  This resulted in changes to GFSI’s guidance for food safety standards, with GFSI-endorsed standards being updated to reflect the updated guidance.  The new guidance requires food businesses to formally address the risks from fraudulently adulterated ingredients when they design their food safety management systems.

The food safety landscape had changed, seemingly overnight, from one that was focussed almost exclusively on unintentional or natural contamination to one that requires food manufacturers to consider, control and prevent more unpredictable and sinister events.

In the wake of these changes, a new discipline of food study has appeared.  It is now possible to study food fraud at prestigious educational institutions, attend international conferences devoted to the topic and tune in to webinars conducted by specialists in compliance, legislation and testing.  Analytical chemistry researchers are developing ever-more sophisticated test methods for detecting adulterants.  Food businesses large and small are developing better systems to prevent, deter and detect economically motivated adulteration within their supply chains.

Food manufacturers are slowly regaining the trust of consumers, helped by the visible presence of enforcement operations and government initiatives such as the United Kingdom’s Food Crime Unit and Interpol’s Operation Opson in Europe as well as the Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) in the United States.

And what of the adulterated beef?  We can only guess at how many tonnes of it was eaten by unsuspecting consumers in countries all over Europe before the scandal broke.  Contaminated product that was withdrawn from the market – tens of millions of units – was destroyed; either buried in landfill or used as animal feed.  It seems a sad and wasteful journey for the unwanted horses of Romania; a journey conceived by men who wanted to be rich and one that ultimately changed the face of food manufacturing forever.

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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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September food fraud update; trade wars, fruit scares and spuds

The ‘trade war’ between the USA and China is really hotting up, with China having imposed import tariffs of up to 25% on US lobsters and other food products in the previous 2 months.  The presence of tariffs greatly increases the risk of fraudulent cross-border activities; Food Fraud Advisors predicts that the new China tariffs will lead to significantly more food fraud within the Chinese-American trade sector as well as having a knock-on affect on food trade internationally.

There have already been allegations of fraud related to the tariff imposition in the North American lobster market.  Canadian lobsters can be imported to China without incurring the tariffs imposed on lobsters from the United States.  It has been alleged that lobsters grown in the USA are being shipped to Canada, re-labeled as Canadian lobsters then exported to China.  Canadian lobster growers fear damage to the ‘Canada’ brand from these activities.

The strawberry scandal in Australia has hit local consumers, retailers and growers hard.  It started with two consumers in the state of Queensland finding metal needles inside fresh strawberries.  The affected brand and its sister brand from the same grower were pulled from shelves.  Within days another needle-like object was found in strawberries from a different brand in a different state; the fruit source was completely different and the incident was labelled a ‘copycat crime’.  In Australia strawberries are typically sold to consumers in clear clam-shell containers with four air holes in the top surface.  The air holes are large enough to allow access to the fruit inside with a small sharp object like a needle while the strawberries are displayed on a supermarket (grocery store) shelf.  Public response has been confusion; why would anyone want to do such a thing?  Since then, other fruits, including apples and bananas have been similarly affected, again, in what appear to be completely independent occurrences.  The food safety sector in Australia is at a loss as to how to prevent this type of incident; fruit is by necessity displayed and accessible for consumers to touch prior to purchase, leaving it vulnerable to malicious adulteration.

Meanwhile, strawberry growers in Australia, who were already struggling to get good prices for their bumper harvest, have seen demand for their fruit plummet.  Media outlets have published reports about farmers who are dumping tonnes of unwanted fruit because the wholesale price has fallen below the cost of production.

Whole potatoes are generally thought to be at low risk of food fraud because of their relatively low value and because of their easily recognisable form.  However, like all fruit and vegetables, they are at risk of being misrepresented with respect to their geographic origin and their variety.  Growers groups have demanded that government authorities investigate allegations of potato fraud in Ireland, after a successful campaign to encourage consumption of locally-grown Queen potatoes.  It has been alleged that imported potatoes and potatoes of other varieties are being re-labelled as Irish Queen potatoes, providing an economic gain for the perpetrators of this fraud.