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A reminder that the EU now publishes a monthly collation of "Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions".  A permanent link to these is also within FAN's Food Fraud Prevention reports listing. Such reports are a valuable aid to vulnerability assessment updates and reviews.

One example within the detail of September's "Suspicions" report is the potential for cause-and-effect between food safety risks and subsequent fraud risks.  Historically, the fumigant ethylene oxice (ETO) has been used to control salmonella risk in shipments of dry seeds/powder ingredients and additives, including xanthan gum.  With the EU ban on ETO, there have been recent RASFFs for residues of ETO in xantham gum.  The impact of the ban on salmonella risk is unclear.  We are now seeing cases of faked health certificates for xanthan gum.

In the last decades, the demand for molecular tools for authenticating and tracing agri-food products has significantly increased. Food safety and quality have gained an increased interest for consumers, producers, and retailers, therefore, the availability of analytical methods for the determination of food authenticity and the detection of major adulterations takes on a fundamental role.

Among the different molecular approaches, some techniques such as the molecular markers-based methods are well established, while some innovative approaches such as isothermal amplificationbased methods and DNA metabarcoding have only recently found application in the agri-food sector.

In this review, we provide an overview of the most widely used molecular techniques for fresh and processed agri-food authentication and traceability, showing their recent advances and applications and discussing their main advantages and limitations. The application of these techniques to agrifood traceability and authentication can contribute a great deal to the reassurance of consumers in terms of transparency and food safety and may allow producers and retailers to adequately promote their products.

Read full review.