University of East Anglia (UEA) is offering another free on-line course on Identifying Food Fraud starting 8 January. The course lasts 4 weeks, and the sessions are for 2 hours/week, in the form of short documentaries, lectures and quizzes covering: 

•Introduction to methods of food fraud detection

•Infra-red detection of fraud in coffee

•Verifying the authenticity of honey using stable isotopes

•Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy and the horsemeat scandal

The course is aimed at first year undergraduates and food company technical managers to raise awareness of methods of analysis to detect food adulteration.

More details and registration at: Identifying food fraud

Russian researchers developed a DNA multiplex assay based on mitochondrial ATPase, which could simultaneously detect ten species (beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, cat, dog, rat, mouse and human) at 0.1-0.2% levels in mixed meat species. They collected 53 samples of meat products both raw and processed from supermarkets in Moscow and the Moscow Region. Forty-nine of the samples were found to contain species not declared on the label, with the most frequent adulteration being the substitution of high value meat (such as beef and turkey) by chicken, which suggests economically motivated substitution. Two samples had both rat and human DNA contamination suggesting very poor hygienic practices. The researchers admit that the assay is sensitive and some of the samples with non-declared ovine DNA could be through cross-contamination.

Read the article at: Russian meat survey  and the abstract in Meat Science here

JRC's monthly summary for food fraud cases has been published for November 2017. Some of the cases highlighted are:-

A number of fish fraud cases in Italy, an extensive organic fruit and vegetable fraud in Sicily, counterfeit Australian wine in China, honey fraud in Corsica and Tuscany, and sub-standard olive oil in Brazil.

Read the Summary at: JRC November 2017

A recent investigation by the US personal finance site, NerdWallet reveals that some fruit are incorrectly labelled as organic when they are not. The report states that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is aware that some labelling fraud is occurring, but it has not taken necessary action to ensure the integrity of the organic label. NerdWallet found that pineapples grown in Costa Rica by the Del Valle Verde Corp. pineapples (under the brand name "Costa Verde") were approved as organic by a USDA-accredited certifier, even though the grower was using pesticides that are not approved as organic, among other practices not conforming with the US organic regulations. The USDA had investigated the case but no action has been taken. The  author of NerdWallet blog also found that a Costa Rican exporter, Ricardo Rudin Mathieu, mislabelled roughly 400,000 pineapples as organic, and those pineapples were later shipped to the U.S. and Canada.

Read the article at: US Organic fruit fraud, and the NerdWallet blog

The Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI) (University of Minnesota) has written a review on economically motivation adulteration (EMA) and its implications for public health. FPDI categorises EMA into eight adulteration methods: dilution, substitution, artificial enhancement, mislabelling, trans-shipment and origin masking, counterfeiting, theft and resale, and intentional distribution of contaminated product. The scope of EMA public health impacts are illustrated through understanding each adulteration method with an associated public health impact examples, which are taken from the FPDI’s Food Adulteration Incidents Registry. 

                                                                                                                                                                                 Read the full article at: EMA and public health

Honey is a high value food which suffers from food fraud, and it is important to have methods to verify its floral and geographical origin. Italian researchers isolated DNA from nine honeys (six monofloral honeys produced in Italy, two polyfloral honeys produced in East Europe and Chile respectively, and one honeydew honey), and PCR amplified for a chloroplast trnL barcoding fragment. The amplicons were sequenced and the data bioinformatically analysed against a database of 150,000 botanical entries. A total of 254 botanical groups were identified from the nine analysed samples.

The prevalent expected botanical origin was confirmed in five out of six monofloral honeys. The plant signature of the labelled lime tree blossom honey did not confirm the expected botanical prevalence. The botanical composition of monofloral and polyfloral honey samples was useful to infer their geographical origin. 

Read the abstract at: NGS authentication of honey

Japan wine has recently been defined for tax purposes as wine made from grapes grown in Japan. Japanese researchers have developed a method based on ICP-MS (inductively coupled-plasma mass spectrometry) and ICP-AES (ICP-atomic emission spectrometry) of 18 elements ( Li, B, Na, Mg, Si, P, S, K, Ca, Mn, Co, Ni, Ga, Rb, Sr, Mo, Ba, and Pb) to distinguish it from imported wine or wine produced from imported raw materials. 214 samples were analysed, and Japan wine had a higher concentration of potassium and lower concentrations of eight elements (Li, B, Na, Si, S, Co, Sr, and Pb) as compared with the other two groups of wine. Chemometric analysis of the data permitted identification of three wine groups: Japan wine, imported wine, and imported wine raw materials with a 91.1% classification score and 87.9% prediction score. In addition similar chemometric analysis of the 18 elements permitted  discrimination of wine from four Japanese geographic origins (Yamanashi, Nagano, Hokkaido, and Yamagata Prefectures) with a classification score of 93.1% and a prediction score of 76.4%.

Read the abstract at: Authenticity of Japanese wine

I wanted to inform all members that Selvarani Elahi will be giving a presentation on the Food Authenticity Network at the Preventing Food Fraud Conference.

As a result, the organisers have agreed that any member of the Network, who wishes to attend the Conference held at One America Square,17 Crosswall, London EC3N 2LB on 22 February 2018, will receive a £200 discount.

You will need to enter the discount code  “FoodAuthenticity” on the registration form to get your discount

Information about the programme and speakers can be found here, and for a registration form on this link.

Greek police have broken up a suspected olive oil adulteration operation and arrested 7 people. They have investigated a company in the Larissa region, which has been adding a green colourant to sunflower oil and selling it as extra virgin olive oil or olive oil from high quality production areas such as Crete or Messinia. The bottled oil was sold in retail and catering in Greece, as well as being exported to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.   . 

Read the full article at: adulterated olive oil 

Picture from the Hellenic police

Academic Press has published a  book - Proteomics in Food Science: From Farm to Fork, which is  a useful reference, providing concepts and practical applications of proteomics for in various disciplines of food science. The book covers a range of methods for elucidating the identity or composition of specific proteins in foods or cells related to food science, from spoilage organisms, to edible components. Of interest to food authenticity, there are chapters on soya proteomics, meat species identification, and fish and other seafood identification.

Read the abstract at: food proteomics or a preview at: proteomics in food science

Canadian researchers have developed a Fourier transformed-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy optimised protocol for analysing both qualitatively and quantitatively beef mince potentially adulterated with six types of beef and/or pork offal (beef tripe, beef liver, beef omasum, pork heart, pork kidney and pork liver). Two dimensional PCA (principal component analysis) chemometric analysis was applied to the authentic dataset of FT-IR spectra, but did not give sufficient discrimination. An optimised chemometric model based on LDA (linear discriminant analysis), PCA-DA, and PLS-DA (partial least squares-discriminant analysis) was found to give more accurate determination and low error rate for 3 classes of samples- beef, beef offal or pork offal. Once the offal is identified, a further chemometric analysis - PLSR (PLS regression) can be performed to determine accurately the amount of offal present. 

Read the full paper at: FTIR Method for Offal in Beef Mince 

The Forensic and Counter Fraud Services at Crowe Clark Whitehall LLP commissioned a survey with Ipsos Mori to establish consumer expectations with respect to food and drink businesses’ approach to counter fraud. The results have been reported in an article in New Food. It reveals that the majority of consumer expect food companies to cooperate and share information with the National and Scottish Food Crime Units on food fraud incidents.  Also 40% of consumers in the survey expect food and drink businesses to share  information with  the regulators before an incident is confirmed, but that there is some reliable evidence of it occurring.

Read the article at: Consumer Survey on Food Fraud Incidents

This articles reviews the actions taken after the horsemeat incident in response to the Elliott Review. Unfortunately it omits to mention Defra's initiative of setting up the Food Authenticity Network.

Read the full article on open access at: Four years post-horsegate 

The FoodIntegrity Project has opened the call for participation in one of the numerous training programmes offered by expert institutes around Europe. The training programmes are mainly on analytical techniques in food authenticity, but there is also a course on food fraud vulnerability assessments.

Please follow this link for further information of the courses: List of Training Opportunities and Institutes

Please follow this link to access the application: Training Application Form

Applications Deadline: 30 November 2017. All applications and CVs to be sent to: Monika.Tomaniova@vscht.cz

Indian researchers have developed a PCR-RFLP method to authenticate 4 shrimp species of the family Penaeidae, namely, Litopenaeus vannamei, Penaeus monodon, P. semisulcatus and Fenneropenaeus indicus.  PCR amplification was performed targeting 16S rRNA/tRNAval region having an amplicon size of 530 bp using the specific primers for shrimps, 16S-Cru4/16S-Cru3. Subsequent restriction analysis with a single restriction enzyme, Tsp5091, yielded a distinct RFLP pattern for each species of shrimps having fragment sizes below 150 bp. The method works with processed shrimp products, and was validated with  commercial products.

Read the abstract here

The research report (FA0158) and SOP of a new method, which has been developed and validated to identify vegetable oil species in mixture of oil, is now available on the website. Development of this method has been necessary because of a change in legislation in the labelling of processed foods containing refined vegetable oils (EU Regulation 1169/2011). It is now obligatory to declare vegetable oil species used in the product in the list of ingredients.

The report (FA0158) can be found on the website under the research section, and the FA0158 SOP document can be downloaded from here

The  Food Brexit 2017 conference held in London on 31 October had 22 speakers from different industry sectors looking at the effect of Brexit on the UK and Irish food and agriculture sectors. It is still unclear what the effect of Brexit will be as negotiations are continuing. Price rises appear inevitable and the possibility of border inspection increases could result in manufacturers cutting corners to maintain their margins.

Read the articles at: Food Brexit 1 and Food Brexit 2

The Danish Consumer Organisation, Forbrugerrådet Tænk, collected 10 samples of oregano from supermarkets and stores around Copenhagen during the summer. The samples were sent for analysis by FTIR and chemometric modelling followed by mass spectrometry for confirmation. Three of the samples had only 50% oregano, and a fourth 70% oregano, the remainder was dried plant material from olive leaves and myrtle. 

Read the article at: Danish oregano tests

The Food Safety Authority-Ireland has increased its investigations into suspected cases of food fraud. It carried out 21 investigations in 2014, 35 in 2015, 34 in 2016, and has carried out 20 up to October this year. This is in line with the European Commission's Food Fraud Network which dealt with 60 cases in 2014, 108 in 2015, and 156 cases in 2016. This information was given at a two day conference - Safeguarding 

the Food Chain - Protecting Authenticity and Integrity, organised jointly by FSA-I and Safefood (the all Ireland Organisation promoting food safety and nutrition).

FSA-I's investigations have focused on fish, olive oil, honey, soft drinks, alcohol and beef.

Read the article here

JRC has published its monthly summary on articles covering food fraud and adulteration. In this September issue, there are articles on frauds involving Guatemalan coffee beans, tuna treated with beet and vegetable broths high in nitrites, and PGI wines in the Venice area.

Read the full summary of articles at: September JRC Fraud Summary