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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.

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Food Fraud Risk Database

It’s huge, it’s completely free and open-access; no log-in required.  It’s our

Food Fraud Risk Information Database

Compiled by food fraud experts and containing information about hundreds of different food types, including past incidences of food fraud and emerging threats, you can use it to meet the requirements of your food safety management system, for

  • food fraud vulnerability assessments,
  • food safety risk assessments
  • hazards from intentional adulteration requiring preventive controls (FSMA)
  • pre-filtering and
  • horizon scanning for emerging threats

You can choose to ‘watch’ the database to receive notifications every time new information is added.  You can also watch individual food types (say “Beef”) to receive updates for just that food type.

Access is free, although if you want to receive notifications you will need to create a (free) Trello account.  We do not receive income from Trello for new sign-ups.

Check it out today

food fraud risk database
Food Fraud Risk Information database, created by Food Fraud Advisors, hosted by Trello.com

 

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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