A new type of crime that goes to the heart of what we eat. Criminal syndicates are infiltrating the global food supply chain, undermining the ability of consumers to trust what is on the label and what ends up on their plate.
This episode was aired 2 weeks ago and is available until 20 October 2021:
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/four-corners/
and then select the food fraud video
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.
Alcohol has emerged as the sector with the largest number of counterfeit cases in India in 2020, with experts attributing this to a lack of enforcement as well as high profits available for counterfeiters during the COVID-19 crisis.
Apart from alcohol, multiple other everyday food items in India including cumin seeds, mustard oil and ghee were mentioned as major sectors affected by counterfeiting activity.
Read full article.
A new environmentally friendly prototype sensor has been developed by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, to help combat food-fraud and protect the reputation of Australian produce.
The novel technology uses vibration energy harvesting and machine learning to accurately detect anomalies in the transportation of products such as meat.
For example, if a refrigeration truck carrying exported meat stopped during its journey to the processing plant, the technology would be able to detect this and if any products had been moved or removed during this period.
This allows producers and logistics operators to pin-point handling errors and identify when products are stolen or substituted.
Read full article.
Food fraud is the intentional deception carried out for gain, and is growing. Rice is the most used and the staple cereal for more than half of the world. Because of the scale of the global rice industry, the opportunities for fraud are large, of concern and threat to the economies and health of many.
This review ouylines the complexities of the global rice industry and outlines current frauds. Fraudulent actions can be on many levels such as: botanical and geographical origin, adulteration/substitution, ageing, cultivation practices, aroma/flavour and amounts of microelements. To deal with new rice frauds, the range of techniques to detect them is increasing.
Current research concerning rice fraud is mainly focussed on rice authenticity testing for botanical/geographical origin or cultivation methods. In the case of Mass Specrometry, more advanced techniques are increasingly applied due to their great untargeted analysis power. Spectroscopic techniques can mainly provide screening, but rapid and non-destructive sample analysis, they are cost effective and once established require little expertise. DNA assays are excellent tools to apply for authenticity testing of botanical origin of rice. There is at present, no single analytical tool capable of providing an answer to all rice authentication problems, thus it is necessary to use several approaches in profiling and identification of possible markers and/or adulterants.
Read full article.
Truffles: the most expensive food on earth and a target for food fraud
Truffles are edible fungi that grow in the soil in symbiosis with the roots of several tree and bush species. Due to their aroma, their price can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars per kilogram. The most valued varieties are the ones produced in Europe (mainly in Croatia, France, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Spain) which account for 85% of the global market.
Scientists from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia, with technical advice and analytical support from the IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), are studying their composition in order to determine their origins and help detect fraud. Thanks to the database and the techniques developed, other laboratories worldwide can also test truffles, establish their geographical origin and verify if they are genuine.
The most important results of their study were recently published in the journal Molecules. The study focuses on fraud related to misrepresentation of the geographical origin or species identification of the mushroom, known as mislabelling.
The cheats can be found out with the help of chemical analysis: because the isotopic make-up of the various truffles grown in different parts of the world are different, this analysis helps reveal their origins. The Slovenian scientists created a reference database for truffles. This database includes natural occurring stable isotope ratio of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and strontium as well as the elemental and isotopic composition of authentic Slovenian truffle samples of the Tuber species (which includes calcium, cadmium, copper, iron, mercury, potassium, phosphorus, lead, aluminium, arsenic, barium, cobalt, chromium, caesium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, nickel, rubidium, sulphur, strontium, vanadium and zinc) from a range of geographical, geological and climatic origins.
Read full article.
The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) (https://www.foodprotection.org/) is one of the three largest food-related professional associations, with more than 4,500 individual food safety professionals focusing on “advancing food safety worldwide.” IAFP started in 1911 as the International Association of Dairy and Milk Inspectors. Their focus expanded to food sanitarians and the current, broader food protection focus. For those of you not familiar with the food industry, “The term public health sanitarian shall mean a person who applies the principles of the natural and social sciences for the detection, evaluation, control and management of those factors in the environment which influence the public’s health.” (reference)
IAFP also is the publisher of several scholarly journals, including the Journal of Food Protection and Food Protection Trends. “The Journal of Food Protection is the leading publication in the field of food microbiology and remains the premier journal dedicated to food safety.”
The IAFP Food Fraud Professional Development Group has published an “interest survey” to be completed by IAFP and PDG members, plus the public at large. We are reviewing our direction for 2021 and beyond. This survey is your opportunity to be heard and to help lead the direction of food fraud prevention.
The survey takes only a few minutes to complete.
Link to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FfPdg2021JulyIntroduction
QR code to the survey:
In March 2021, the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific published a booklet entitled “Food fraud – Intention, detection and management”. This concise resource explains the key aspects of food fraud, and discusses a set of measures that food safety authorities can take to stop food fraud. Among these, legal interventions combined with the use of new technologies are promising tools.
Examples of these interventions, such as adopting a definition for food fraud and implementing food standards as well as applying DNA barcoding and blockchain technology, are included in the booklet. Links are readily available in the booklet for those who wish to have greater know-how on the guidance on food labelling, technological interventions and food import and export certification systems provided by FAO and the Codex Alimentarius.
Download the publication:
FAO Food safety toolkit booklet 5 - Food fraud – Intention, detection and management
For more information:
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.
Two men and one woman accused of being at the basis of Belgium’s biggest-ever food fraud have been sentenced by a court in Antwerp.
The three were among seven accused and four companies charged with using the insecticide Fipronil (flea control products for pets) in the cleaning of poultry farms. The pollution that was caused as a result led to the destruction of two million hens and 77 million eggs that were polluted with the chemical.
The court heard, that one of the accused failed to inform the poultry farmers of the contents of the product he was using, which was indeed effective in controlling pests, were it not for the small problem of contamination with a banned product. According to witnesses, he told prospective customers the product his company used was reinforced with menthol and eucalyptus.
Read full article here.
Your business’s culture is its ‘DNA’. It represents the unique way it operates; ‘How we do things around here’. It’s what diff erentiates your business and defines its values. Leaders set the tone for this culture and, in this sense, leadership is the dynamic way that each organisation is led by either an individual or group (eg, board or management).
Dishonesty within any business, be it internal or external, can result from many factors. One factor that is often overlooked is leadership – not in the sense of governance but as a key dynamic impacting culture and therefore engagement. Engagement is key. Failing to instil the right culture can lead to heightened risk of employee disenchantment, which can present itself in many ways – from simple acts of ignorance through to dishonest activity. It is often cited that pressure initiates symptoms that lead to dishonest behaviour. Pressure can encourage employees to act dishonestly as they use it to rationalise their conduct. That is the traditional fraud triangle.1
However, in all sectors, we overlook how pressure is associated with fraud and is directly attributable to leadership.
Read full article.
Food crime is a key threat to food companies and consumers around the world. The cost to the global food industry for food fraud (which is only one type of crime) has been estimated at around EUR 30 billion every year, according to a 2018 report by the European Commission.
Many companies are making important efforts to reduce and prevent crime from happening across the supply chain and protect their customers and consumers everywhere.
In order to help the food sector to continue strengthening its efforts in preventing food crime, SSAFE has partnered with five leading experts to develop a free educational video series. Dr. John Spink, Dr. Chris Elliott, Dr. Wim Huisman, Jason Bashura and Neal Fredrickson take us on a journey through the world of food fraud, food defence and food integrity – what it is, what the issues are, what is being done, and what can be done in the future in order to help reduce and prevent food crime from occurring.
“Throughout history food crime has been a serious problem” says Adrian Sharp, President of SSAFE. “Working together with some of the best leading experts in the world on food fraud, food defence and food integrity SSAFE continues to help increase awareness and strengthen the food supply chain across the world. This lecture series should be very helpful and informative in helping the food industry, from farm to fork, reduce food crime for a better future.”
This free video series, which can be accessed through the SSAFE website (www.ssafe-food.org), will help people working across the food sector better understand what food crime is, the different types of crime that may occur, and what a food business can do about it. Through a broad series of short videos these global experts share their decades worth of knowledge and experience to help strengthen food supply around the world.
Dr. Chris Elliott says “The SSAFE Food Crime Prevention Series is the first of its kind and I hope that both industry and government agencies will find the videos informative and helpful in combatting the growing menace of criminal activity in our global food system.”
This video series complements other important tools from SSAFE such as the Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment tool developed in 2016 available through the 'Tools' page of the Food Authenticity Network's Food Fraud Mitigation section. This tool (available for free in ten languages) enables any food company to self-assess their vulnerability to food fraud. The tool has been a great success with 40,000+ downloads and more than 7,500 online assessments completed across 70+ countries.
In addition to these tools, SSAFE will be launching a free Food Safety Culture assessment tool this summer. Please visit the SSAFE website next month (April 2021) for further information.
The SSAFE Food Crime Prevention Lecture Series has also been added to the 'Guidance' page of the Food Authenticity Network's Food Fraud Mitigation section.
Experts Ron McNaughton, head of the Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit (SFCIU), at Food Standards Scotland, and Chris Elliott, professor of food security at Queen's University Belfast and director of the Institute for Global Food Safety, took part in a joint question and answer interview tackling a variety of food crime issues.
Food fraud poses a serious threat to the food system. How can we fight against it and be confident that the food we are buying is authentic and safe?
Read full blog, which refers to the Food Authenticity Network as a "great example" of what is being done to mitigate and prevent food fraud.
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published its February 2021 Food Fraud Monthly Summary reporting food fraud incidents and investigations from around the world.
Thanks again to our Member Bruno Séchet for creating this infographic and allowing us to share it with the rest of the Network
Read the February 2021 Summary here
The National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) has developed this food fraud resilience self-assessment tool to support businesses in developing and implementing their counter-fraud strategy.
The self-assessment tool covers different areas that businesses will need to be aware of so that they can better identify and address process issues.
The tool is made up of 7 sections and provides advice for countering food fraud. These questions will help you to evaluate your business and identify areas for improvement. The tool will not provide you with a final score.
This can be completed anonymously and any data submitted will not be collected in a way that could identify you. The tool should take no more than 15 minutes to use.
If you have further questions for the NFCU Prevention Team, or would like support in building your business's fraud resilience, provide your email address at the end of the tool or contact us directly at NFCU.Prevention@food.gov.uk.
Access the NFCU's food fraud resilience self-assessment tool here.
The Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil), supported by the French Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie Nationale) and Europol have dismantled an organised crime group involved in the production, distribution and sale of alleged organic pistachios which did not meet required ecological standards.
The operation began in 2019, with various reports of ecological certifications being misused on pistachios that did not adhere to set agricultural standards. The Spanish Civil Guard detected a mix of organic and non-organic pistachio nuts that contained pesticides (including glyphosate and chlorate), illegal under requisites imposed by the Spanish agricultural sector.
The investigation uncovered that the illegal pesticides were being used to better the quality and quantity of the harvests and increase the monetary value of the production. Marketed as organic the nuts were sold for up to 80% over the retail price of non-organic pistachios. The nuts from the main Spanish distributor were also being sold in France under false organic certifications.
Read full article.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are being felt across the world and it is reasonable to expect that they have the potential to impact on the vulnerability of the global food supply chain to food fraud. Recent reports suggest the potential for increased food fraud in global food supply chains due to the impact of COVID-19.
The Food Authenticity Network (FAN) and Mérieux Nutrisciences have collaborated to undertake a detailed assessment of the data to establish whether food fraud incidents are indeed increasing.
The analysis conducted identified a small increase in official food fraud alerts since the onset of the pandemic (19 more official reports) and a more significant increase in the number of media reports (81 more media reports) in January to June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019).
It is not clear how significant the observed increases are considering the availability of a relatively small number of global official food fraud alerts and the variability in the type of data available from different countries and sources, making it difficult to undertake statistical comparisons.
Following extraordinary meetings of its Advisory Board in May and July 2020, FAN concluded that the conditions created by the pandemic have increased food fraud vulnerability but that there was insufficient evidence of ‘dramatic’ increases in specific COVID-19-related food fraud incidents. This study supports that conclusion. However, it is likely that the true impact of COVID-19 on the incidence of global food fraud will not be known until full resumption of regulatory surveillance world-wide and at this point, it is possible that more evidence concerning pandemic-related factors may emerge.
In the meantime, FAN recommends that due to the heightened vulnerability of food to fraud, the food industry be extra vigilant and use the available existing best practice authenticity control measures and tools (COVID-19 Resource Base) to mitigate any potential emerging threats.
Read full article.
The Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission has published its Monthly Food Fraud Summary for November 2020.
Thanks again to our Member Bruno Séchet for creating this fantastic infographic and allowing us to share with the rest of the Network 😁.
Access JRC Monthly Food Fraud Reports.
Food Fraud: A Global Threat With Public Health and Economic Consequences serves as a practical resource on the topic of food fraud prevention and compliance with regulatory and industry standards.
It includes a brief overview of the history of food fraud, current challenges, and vulnerabilities faced by the food industry, and requirements for compliance with regulatory and industry standards on mitigating vulnerability to food fraud, with a focus on the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Benchmarking Requirements.
The book also provides individual chapters dedicated to specific commodities or sectors of the food industry known to be affected by fraud, with a focus on specific vulnerabilities to fraud, the main types of fraud committed, analytical methods for detection, and strategies for mitigation.
The book provides an overview of food fraud mitigation strategies applicable to the food industry and guidance on how to start the process of mitigating the vulnerability to food fraud. The intended audience for this book includes food industry members, food safety and quality assurance practitioners, food science researchers and professors, students, and members of regulatory agencies.
Food Authenticity Network Members are eligible for a 30% discount by using the code ATR30 at https://www.elsevier.com/books/food-fraud/hellberg/978-0-12-817242-1
