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From 14 June 2026, the amendments introduced by Directive (EU) 2024/1438 are now applicable across the EU, bringing important changes to honey, fruit juices, jams and preserved milk products.

Key changes include:

🍯 Honey – Clearer origin labelling for blends, with countries listed in descending order by weight, plus stronger measures to support authenticity and traceability.

🧃 Fruit Juices – New provisions for reduced-sugar juices and clearer communication that fruit juices contain only naturally occurring sugars.

🍓 Jams & Marmalades – Increased minimum fruit content requirements and greater flexibility in the use of the terms "jam" and "marmalade" for certain citrus products.

🥛 Preserved Milk Products – Recognition of lactose-free preserved dehydrated milk products, expanding consumer choice.

🎯 The changes aim to improve transparency, support informed consumer choices and strengthen confidence in food authenticity.

PAS 96:2026 – Updated Guidance on Food Defence

PAS 96:2026 provides guidance for food businesses on assessing, managing and reducing the risk of deliberate threats that could compromise food safety, authenticity or supply continuity. Using a Threat Assessment Critical Control Point (TACCP) approach, it helps organisations identify vulnerabilities and implement proportionate controls to deter, detect and respond to malicious acts.

The 2026 edition is a full revision of PAS 96:2017 and reflects an evolving threat landscape. Key updates include:

• Greater recognition of cyber threats
• Lessons learned from Covid-19-related supply chain disruptions
• The potential impact of climate change on food systems, and
• Emerging risks associated with sustainability and food waste reduction initiatives.

The revised document also incorporates recent food defence case studies, updated cybercrime information, refinements to the TACCP process, and a restructured format with practical tools and checklists consolidated into Annex D.

We are delighted to see both the Food Authenticity Network (FAN) and, one of our Partner organisations, the Food Industry Intelligence Network (fIIn) referenced within PAS 96:2026, recognising the important role that collaboration, intelligence sharing and access to trusted resources play in strengthening food system resilience.

Access a free copy here.

The reference to PAS 96:2017 in the 'tools-guides-reports' section of FAN's Food Fraud Prevention pages has also been updated.

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) has published the results of targeted authenticity testing on frozen processed pork and beef products as part of its Annual Targeted Food Sampling Programme 2023–24.

A total of 160 frozen processed pork and beef products were analysed for the presence of undeclared meat species. All samples were found to be satisfactory, with no undeclared species detected.

The results provide reassurance that the products tested were accurately described and demonstrate the value of ongoing food authenticity surveillance. Regular monitoring helps verify compliance, maintain consumer confidence and provide evidence that supply-chain controls are working effectively.

Read full report here.

This eSeminar explores the science, regulation, and analysis of folic acid (vitamin B9) in bread and flour within the UK food sector.

It explains the essential role folate plays in human health and development, particularly in cell growth, DNA synthesis, and the prevention of neural tube defects during pregnancy. It also outlines current UK legislation governing the mandatory addition of folic acid to non-wholemeal wheat flour and public health objectives behind flour fortification.

A review of the analytical methods currently used to determine folate levels in bread and flour matrices is presented, which includes microbiological assays and chromatographic techniques such as HPLC and LC-MS/MS. The strengths, limitations, and practical considerations of each method are compared, alongside best-practice guidance for sampling, quality assurance, and data interpretation.

Finally, an explanation of how folate test results should be interpreted and reported, and highlights UK laboratories that offer folate testing services for the food industry and regulatory compliance purposes.

This eSeminar has been added to 'eSeminars' part of FAN's Training section.

The UK High Court has ruled that the Government did not fully assess the consequences of deregulating gene-edited organisms before introducing the Precision Breeding Regulations. The judgment focused on whether the impacts of removing requirements relating to transparency, traceability and labelling had been adequately considered during the policy-making process.

The case does not determine whether gene editing is safe or unsafe, nor does it prohibit the use of gene-editing technologies. Rather, it highlights the importance of ensuring that regulatory decisions fully consider their practical implications for supply chains, food businesses, consumers and assurance schemes.

For the food authenticity community, the ruling reinforces the ongoing significance of traceability, transparency and the ability to substantiate claims throughout the supply chain. As regulatory approaches to emerging technologies continue to evolve, robust systems for verification and information exchange remain essential to maintaining confidence in food products and supporting informed consumer choice.

Read the full judgement here.

Photo by Warren Umoh on Unsplash

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is the basis of an increasing number of onsite sensors for both food authenticity and food contaminant applications. However, its practical application to filament-type herbal materials such as saffron remains challenging, largely because their irregular surfaces hinder efficient sampling and lead to poor hotspot uniformity.

In this paper (purchase required, USD $36) the authors report a design modification that overcomes this hurdle.  They designed a template-assisted electrospun fiber membrane with well-ordered microcone arrays (EFM-OMA) as a flexible 3D SERS platform. They report that this architecture provides a highly repeatable nanoscale enhancement environment, enabling dense and uniform AgNPs-based hotspots across the entire substrate. This structure not only enhances electromagnetic coupling but also significantly improves molecular collection efficiency during swabbing of irregular solid samples.

They applied the sensor to adulterated saffron.  They report good sensitivity and signal reproducibility, meaning that the full-spectrum fingerprints obtained from the swab can be reliably analyzed using a Random Forest classifier, enabling accurate identification of dye-adulterated saffron. They report easy and pretreatment-free discrimination of pure vs dye-adulterated saffron.

Photo by Vera De on Unsplash

This paper (purchase required, US$ 38) reports the development of a point-of-use loop mediated isothermal (LAMP) assay to detect soybean adulteration in vegetable oils.

The LAMP primers of rtLAMP were designed based on the ITS2 sequence and further were used for validating the specificity and sensitivity.

The authors report that the LAMP primers of rtLAMP exhibited high specificity for amplifying soybean DNA extracted from oil samples, achieving authentication within 30 min at an isothermal temperature of 62 °C. The sensitivity of rtLAMP was 10³-fold greater than that of real-time PCR (1 ng) for soybean DNA detection. rtLAMP could detect down to 10% of soybean oil adulterated in the edible oil sample. Moreover, all commercial edible oil products were positively identified (6/6) using rtLAMP, whereas the real-time PCR only identified 4 out of 6.

For an overview of LAMP principles see our Analytical Explainers page.

Photo by P. L. on Unsplash

This review (open access) covers the main approaches for verifying tea traceability, including sensory analysis, stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA), mineral element fingerprints, spectroscopy and mass spectrometry metabolomics, and emerging sensors.  The authors then discuss in some detail why some of these approaches are more – or less – applicable for different types of tea.

They argue that origin traceability of tea is not merely an analytical chemistry issue. The essential differences in the processing techniques of the six major tea types (green, white, yellow, oolong, black, and dark)  determine that the applicability boundaries of the same traceability technology may vary significantly among different tea types.

• The high-temperature kill-green process in green tea deactivates the polyphenol oxidase activity, preserving the original chemical fingerprint of the fresh leaves to the greatest extent.
• White tea undergoes the least processing intervention, and theoretically has the best traceability.
• The impact of the micro-fermentation process on the chemical profile of yellow tea remains to be systematically evaluated.
• Oolong tea’s withering and roasting processes result in a fermentation degree ranging from 10% to 70%, making the complexity of the chemical fingerprint’s interference from processing the most among the six major tea types.
• The full fermentation process in black tea converts a large amount of catechins into theaflavins and thearubigins, deeply reshaping the primary metabolite profile.
• The post-fermentation of dark tea, driven by microbial communities, triggers biochemical transformations that can last for months or even years, with the origin signal highly intertwined with factors such as the degree of fermentation, aging years, and tree age

Photo by 五玄土 ORIENTO on Unsplash

Food fraud has emerged as a significant and under-recognised public health threat, with documented global incidents resulting in severe illness, hospitalisations, and fatalities. International estimates suggest that up to 9% of the global food trade is adulterated.                                                                                                             

In South Africa, evidence of mislabelling, substitution, counterfeit products, illicit trade, and the use of unauthorised additives continues to surface, yet the national burden and regulatory response remain insufficiently characterised.This review synthesised peer-reviewed literature and articles from reputable South African media sources published from 2015 to December 2025, focusing on food fraud within the South African context. Searches were conducted across Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and PubMed, supplemented by Google Scholar and the EU Food Fraud Database, with emphasis on studies reporting fraud associated with South African food products. Standard PRISMA procedures guided the final selection of fifteen (14) eligible articles.

These studies reveal widespread food fraud driven mainly by economic gain. Common practices include substituting high-value products, mislabelling meat and seafood, altering dates on expired goods, and producing counterfeits with unauthorised additives and packaging. Collectively, these factors compromise consumer health, undermine industry integrity, and impede effective surveillance. Strengthening South Africa’s food fraud prevention ecosystem will require coordinated multisectoral engagement, targeted investment in detection technologies, and robust regulatory reforms. 

Figure 1 of the paper shows a hazard-based ranking of food fraud concepts based on severity and potential public health impact. The model categorises seven common food fraud types, i.e., unapproved enhancements, substitution, dilution, concealment, mislabelling, counterfeiting, and grey market, according to their relative risk. Higher tiers represent a greater potential for consumer harm due to toxicity, allergen exposure, or deception, while lower tiers reflect economic or regulatory concerns with minimal direct health risk.

Read full paper here.

The latest EU Agri-Food Suspicions report, for April 2026, has been published here.  As with previous months’ FAN have produced a rolling 3-month graphic to visualise the relative prevalence and trends in the main issues.  These are regulatory reports from within the EU (as compared to the EU JRC monthly collation, which is based on global media reports) and are only suspicions.  Due to the phasing lag in the EU publishing their reports, our own graphic always just misses the FAN monthly e-mail bulletin.  However, one clear trend is that relative prevalences are remarkably consistent over time.

Trends and highlights from our analysis include. 

• Despite species substitution having the highest public resonance, it accounts for a relatively low proportion of suspicions.  Most are activities that have a low entry hurdle for potential criminals.  The highest proportion of suspicions continue to relate to illegal trade – for example, unlicenced operators or attempting to evade import checks – and to falsified traceability documentation or certification. 
• There appears a sustained gradual increase in cases relating to excess water in frozen seafood, fish, or chilled chicken (including analytical indicators such as excess polyphosphates).
• Suspicions can be raised as a result of mass balance checks – for example, in April, a number of cases where the volume of poultry despatched for transport did not match the volume delivered
• March saw a spike in undeclared sulphite preservative in dried fruit.  It is possible that this was the consequence of a targeted sampling campaign.
• One interesting nugget: clementines that were judged to be falsely branded as “Portuguese” not on the basis of any written pack-copy, but on the basis of a picture.

FAN also produce a free annual aggregate of "most adulterated foods" from three of the commercial providers, which gives very high level smoothed data based on global official reports.  Our 2025 summary can be found here.

 Our interpretation of the Agrifood suspicion reports is subjective. In order to show consistent trends we have excluded cases which appear to be unauthorised sale but with no intent to mislead consumers (e.g. unapproved food additives, novel foods which are declared on pack), we have excluded unauthorised health claims on supplements, and we have excluded residues and contaminants above legal limits.  We have grouped the remaining incidents into crude categories.  Our analysis is intended only to give a high-level overview

In this issue, we share our 2025 Global Food Fraud Report and updates to FAN resources, including a new searchable database of open-access research reports and our expanded index of authenticity databases.

We also reflect on key milestones in our 2025 Annual Highlights, and spotlight activities across our network, such as the CoE meeting in
March and improved CoE pages allowing easier access to experts. You’ll also find FAN-tastic contributions from across our community, which explore real-world fraud challenges and solutions, alongside updates from EFF-CoP project and the growing EU Cluster for Food Integrity and Trust.

As always, we welcome your feedback on what you’d like to see in future editions, and we encourage you to share this newsletter with colleagues who may benefit from FAN’s resources. Together, we can continue to improve transparency, protect consumers, and support a fairer, more trustworthy food system.

Read newsletter here.

This monthly highlights report has been produced for FAN members by one of our Partner organisations, iComplai.

The report is an AI-generated prioritised digest.  It is blended from online regulatory and media reports of food fraud incidents and suspicions, giving a summary of each selected issue and suggested mitigation steps.

iComplai are one of a number of commercial providers of digital horizon scanning tools, many of whom are signposted on FAN.  We do not endorse any specific company.  We are grateful to iComplai for providing this free digest which we hope you find useful.

If you know of a tool which would be beneficial to signpost to our membership, or if you are interested in becoming a FAN Partner, then please get in touch.

This paper (open access) recommends the use of sorbitol as an endogenous isotopic reference marker compound for the detection of C4-type sugar adulteration in apple juice.

Apple juice is traded mostly as concentrate because it is more efficient to transport and store than single-strength juice.  It is valued according to its Brix measurement.  There is therefore a motivation to add sugars (increasing the Brix) in order to – in turn – mask dilution. .  Most cheap commercial sugars originate from C-4 plants, and chemical components may therefore have a different carbon isotopic ratio to equivalent chemical components originating from the unadulterated apple juice

The authors present an improved analytical method which utilizes the naturally occurring sorbitol in apple juice as an isotopic reference marker. The method uses liquid chromatography coupled to isotope ratio mass spectrometry (LC-IRMS) to determine the δ¹³C values of the major endogenous sugars in apple juice.

They report  that the δ¹³C value of sorbitol can be measured in the same analytical run as the other major sugar components and remains unaffected by the addition of exogenous C4-type sugars to the apple juice.  A difference between the sorbitol's isotope ratio and that of other components is therefore an indicator of adulteration.

They conclude that this method offers significant advantages over existing approaches, notably by eliminating the need for extensive sample preparation and multiple analytical methods thereby improving both analytical throughput and ease of use.

The authors of this paper include scientists from two of the laboratories in FAN’s Centre of Expertise network; GfL and Fera Science.

Photo by Katrin Hauf on Unsplash

This paper (purchase required, USD$31.50) investigates trnL (p6-loop) metabarcoding to verify the origin of honey by its floral signature.  It is a proof of concept based on analysis of 20 Turkish honey encompassing blossom and honeydew honeys purchased from local markets in a variety of local regions.

In particular, the researchers investigated the advantages of pooling samples for such “floral fingerprinting”.  They report that pooling of samples increased diversity recovery (higher richness and Shannon index) and improved the detection of both dominant and rare taxa that can be underrepresented in single samples. The individually sequenced blossom honey confirmed key label taxa, while the pool provided a landscape-level botanical profile consistent with declared compositions across products.

This study (purchase required – USD$24.95) developed and validated a classification model using portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to detect adulterants in butter. Seven adulterants were studied in a range between 2% and 100%: palm fat, margarine, and cottonseed, canola, sunflower, corn, and soybean oils. A total of 412 samples were analyzed, including 12 adulterated samples seized in an operation of the Brazilian Federal Police.

The authors report that their model performed an almost perfect classification, with the discrimination corresponding to key variables associated mainly with C–H (fat) bonds. This interpretation was corroborated by an exploratory principal component analysis (PCA) model. Samples seized by the Brazilian police were effectively detected as non-authentic. The estimate of quantitative parameters, decision limit (CCα) and detection capability (CCβ), for qualitative methods allowed to establish semi-quantitative models.

They conclude that this approach provides a practical, non-destructive, and environmentally friendly solution for food authentication, addressing the urgent need for reliable methods in combating butter adulteration.

Photo by Sorin Gheorghita on Unsplash

An interesting editorial blog from a UK legal firm on whether use of AI in internal company processes can increase risk of prosecution under the Failure to Prevent Fraud Act.

This UK Act enshrines a legal principle that is common to other anti-fraud law around the world.  Unlike traditional corporate criminal attribution, the prosecution does not need to establish that any senior individuals within the company knew about or were party to the fraud. Liability arises solely from the fact that a fraud offence was committed (by any “associated party”) that would benefit the company.

The defence is that a company took reasonable steps to mitigate fraud risks, including by its own employees and suppliers.  This is analogous to the “due diligence” defence in food safety law.

The argument here is that you cannot “outsource” this due diligence to AI.  This is because it is foreseeable that AI results will sometimes be incorrect.  In fact, if you use AI without human verification, you are weakening the due diligence defence and foreseeably increasing the likelihood of giving misleading statements.  This applies to relying on AI for everything from supply-chain risk assessments to drafting of company financial reports.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

This study (open access) investigated turmeric adulteration with lead chromate across five eastern Indian states through a combination of sample analysis and qualitative supply chain assessments. Lead chromate is a known adulterant of ground spices including turmeric, used to enhance the colour and therefore infer a higher quality or mask dilution.   The researchers collected 503 turmeric samples from 34 cities and conducted 128 stakeholder interviews between 2021-2023. In total, 30% of turmeric samples exceeded India’s permissible lead limit of 10 µg g⁻¹.

They also performed a population-level risk assessment and modelled the cost to India’s health system and economy, assuming the adulteration rate could be extrapolated across the region.  They concluded that halting the practice of turmeric adulteration with lead chromate could increase child IQ by up to 2.3 points, resulting in future income gains of US$ 239 million to 1.6 billion annually in the Bihar region alone. If cardiovascular disease mortality reductions are included, there would be an additional benefit of approximately US$ 430 million to 2.8 billion per year.

Photo by Tamanna Rumee on Unsplash

A recent California court ruling is a reminder that food companies must be cognitive of labelling laws in the country of sale.  In the US, this includes state-specific law.

This case related to a liquorice sweet labelled as “free from …. artificial colours and flavours”.  It included the declared ingredient malic acid.  At a US federal level (FDA) this is legal, because – although the form of DL-malic acid used was synthetic - malic acid is classified as a favour enhancer not a flavour.

Under California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA), however, claims of consumer fraud are judged by the “reasonable consumer standard,” i.e., whether a hypothetical reasonable consumer would likely be deceived by the defendant’s conduct.  The California court found that, in this case, the company had acted fraudulently in deceiving the consumer.

You can read the full judgement here

The National Food Crime Unit of the Food Standards Agency have published their latest industry update.  Included are:

• NFCU priorities through to March 2027:

1. Adulteration and substitution of lamb, beef and poultry products
2. Waste diversion including animal by product (ABP) handling within red meat, poultry, dairy and feed supply chains
3. Specific supply chains presenting high levels of authenticity risk to the UK
4. Maintaining a focus on illegal meat imports and continuing work on our mapped Organised Crime Groups

• Demand pressures on sacrificial meat as Qurbani 2026 approaches
• Supply pressure on pistachio nuts and raisins, increased risk of origin fraud
• Supply pressure on Atlantic cod, risk of species substitution
• NFCU self-assessment tool
• Key watchouts for beef fraud in the hospitality trade
• New Seasoning and Spice Association guidance on authenticity of herbs and spices.

You can sign up for these e-mailed industry updates, and see previous updates, here

Greece’s organic certification fraud was first revealed last year.  Problems were systemic.  Certification bodies and 3^rd party auditors were implicated, issuing site certification without the required inspection and falsifying audit and site visit records.  Two of Greece’s six certification bodies were suspended.

The fraud motivation was to claim undeserved farming subsidies.

Greece’s agriculture minister has now cancelled two key organic subsidy programmes for livestock and beekeeping, and suspended all applications, pending a full overhaul of the system.  Organic certification schemes are still in operation in Greece using the remaining four Certification Bodies.

See media report here.

Photo by Emre on Unsplash