News

In 2020 to 2021, the CFIA tested a total of 525 samples for authenticity. Its targeted sampling yielded the following % of satisfactory results:

88.5% honey, 91.2% fish, 87.8% olive oil, 66.2% other expensive oils (such as, sesame seed oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil, almond oil and others), and 92.9% spices.

Where the results were unsatisfactory, the CFIA took corrective or enforcement action, including products being removed from Canadian market, or their detention, destruction, or relabelling. In the case of honey for example, the following amounts of adulterated honey was prevented from entering the Canadian market.

• 142 kg of imported honey was voluntarily destroyed
• 17 800 kg were removed from Canada
• 10 963 cases and 5 barrels were detained

The results of the CFIA's report on food fraud are being used to inform future sampling and inspection strategies to better target foods that are more likely to be misrepresented.

Read the CFIA News Release or the full report giving all the results of the sampling.

In spring 2021, Oceana Canada tested 94 seafood samples from retailers and restaurants in four major
Canadian cities: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Halifax and found that of the samples tested, 46 per cent were mislabelled.

This is consistent with national testing conducted between 2017-2019, which showed that 47 per cent of 472 seafood samples tested were mislabelled in some way. Of these,
51 per cent of 373 samples were previously mislabelled in the same four cities tested.

Read full report.

This report contextualises the topic of food fraud across Canada’s agri-food system and presents a novel intervention framework to Deter, Identify and Prosecute (DIP) food fraud.

In this context, deter refers to the strengthening of regulatory and legal deterrents. Identify refers to the
scientific methods to identify food fraud and prosecute refers to the ability to use
the scientific evidence as a basis to prosecute bad actors.

The authors believe that this novel framework captures and integrates the key components which are essential
to reducing the risk of food fraud in Canada.

Read full report.