The latest monthly EU agri-food suspicion report (July 2024) has been published. It lists 325 suspicious incidents which have been retrieved from 833 iRASFF notifications (iRASFF is the inter-country notification system for incidents which - unlike RASFF - do not have a direct safety risk. iRASFF notifications are not public).
As ever, these are not confirmed frauds but are incidents or suspicions which triggered further investigation.
The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service has issued a new guideline on the steps food companies are expected to take to substantiate on-pack claims such as “antibiotic free” on meat and poultry products. They mandate robust documentation to support the claim and embed a strong steer towards 3rd party certification.
Animal-raising claims such as "raised without antibiotics," "grass-fed" and "free-range," and environment-related claims such as "raised using regenerative agriculture practices" and "climate-friendly," are voluntary marketing claims in the US. The documentation submitted by companies to support such claims is reviewed by FSIS and can only be included on meat and poultry labels after they are approved by the agency.
These strengthened guidelines follow a recent USDA survey which found that 20% of meat on the market labelled as “antibiotic free” contained residues of antibiotics.
Image from the guideline publication.
Two reviews have recently been published covering the use of NMR for food authentication applications.
In this review (purchase required), the key applications of NMR in food authentication, described in the literature in the 2019–2024 period, are summarized, with emphasis on food metabolomics, complementary tools such as other analytical platforms, and chemometric models.
The authors argue that food metabolomics offers enormous opportunities to obtain detailed information that can be correlated to the composition of foods. NMR analysis allows the comprehensive monitoring of the molecular profile of hundreds of metabolites in foods in a single experiment, with high repeatability and accuracy. They conclude that a validated nontargeted NMR workflow is still needed.
This article (a chapter within an e-book about NMR applications in environmental analysis) covers NMR applications for both food authenticity and contaminant testing. It gives a brief overview of NMR methodologies, examples and several applications concerning the detection of specific frauds in food and agricultural products. It covers both high resolution NMR coupled with chemometrics and low resolution and low field NMR techniques.
You can find FAN’s introductory guide to the principle and application of NMR here.
Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash
This 6-hour, 5-module, e-learning course has been produced under the EU Better Training for Safer Food (BTSF) programme. The aim of this basic-level course is to improve knowledge of staff performing official controls and their understanding of agri-food fraud, to strengthen their capacity in investigation techniques to detect and counter agri-food fraud, and to disseminate best practices, tools and procedures to detect fraud in the agri-food chain.
The specific objectives of the training are:
China does not have a national database of Economically Motivated Adulteration (EMA) events or suspicions. In this research article (open access) the authors collated 6477 reported events from central and local governmental websites (the State Administration for Market Regulation, China FDA, Chinacourt, etc.), online media (China Food Safety Net, Chinanews, Foodmate, Baidu, Sina, etc.), and the literature (CNKI), from 2000 to 2020.
Example chart from the report.
The authors have categorised trends by the type of fraud (e.g. adulteration, substitution), by the type of product affected (with meat products topping the list, but a long tail of other types of food) and also by Province. The report is illustrated by a range of pie charts and distribution graphs. It shows how trends in the specific types of fraud have changed over the past two decades although the total rate of incidence has remained high.
The authors conclude that food fraud is closely related to the local food industrial structure, consumption habits, and economic development. The EMAs will still be at a high level in the next 4 years based on the trend forecast line; therefore, production process supervision should be strengthened in high-incidence regions such as Guangdong, Shandong, Henan, Beijing, and Zhejiang, especially before the Spring Festival. Meat, vegetables and fruit are all high risk areas, as are frauds including of illegal addition, substitution or dilution and unqualified hygiene.
The International Fruit and Vegetable Juice Association (IFU) is to make IFU methods freely accessible to official laboratories in future.
Interested parties should contact the IFU Secretariat; the contact person is Aintzane Esturo (aintzane@ifu-fruitjuice.com).
The July 2024 edition of the monthly report on EU Agri-Food Fraud suspicions has been published.
This month's suspicions were retrived from 833 IRASFF notifications and the vast majority of fraud suspicions fell into the categories of implicit claim voilations, product tampering and record tampering. The five products categories with the most fraud suspicions were:
View this month's and all 2024 reports at: FFN monthly - European Commission (europa.eu)
A recent New York federal court ruling has clarified US law around on-pack “Made with …….” claims, although the legal position is still complex. Does the “made with ….” variety need to be the predominant ingredient, or can the claim merely be interpreted as “Included” amongst other, cheaper, varieties?
The court ruled that context is critical. If it is a primary ingredient then the “Made with ….” variety needs to be predominant. For example, an apple pie “Made with Bramley apples” must contain more Bramley apples than cheaper apples. But the same apple pie that claimed “Pastry made with real butter” could, legitimately, use pastry that included some butter but contained shortening as its predominant fat. This is because customers select the pie on the basis of the “apple” rather than the pastry. The amount of butter should still be made clear to the customer.
A fuller report can be found on the Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance blog.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Job Description: Food Authenticity Specialist(P4) - (2024/0453 (020249))
Organization: NAFA-Food Safety and Control Laboratory
Primary Location: Austria-Lower Austria-Seibersdorf-IAEA Laboratories in Seibersdorf
Job Posting: 2024-08-09, 8:15:53 AM
Closing Date: 2024-08-30, 10:59:00 PM
IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING APPLICATION DEADLINE: Please note that the closing date for submission of applications is indicated in local time as per the time zone of the applicant's location.
Role
The Food Authenticity Specialist is: (1) a technical officer and research coordinator, ensuring the efficient and effective development, implementation and dissemination of research, training and scientific and technical knowledge, and assisting in the evaluation and implementation of technical cooperation projects for the IAEA and FAO; (2) a technical expert, planning and conducting technical meetings and project review missions; (3) a facilitator, working with Member States to meet their national and regional agricultural development objectives, and; (4) a liaison with relevant stakeholders on issues related to the transfer of sampling and analytical technologies to Member States.
Apply online.
The authors of this study (open access) have used gas chromatography with mass spectrometry in selected ion monitoring mode (GC/MS-SIM) to create a database that summarizes the occurrence and semi-quantitative levels of 150 sterols with 27–32 carbon atoms and 0–4 double bonds in 66 different vegetable oils and eight other matrices. They believe that this is the first time that such a comprehensive sterol database has been collated.
The paper includes a pdf Appendix file that lists all of the oil varieties and sterol markers in detail. This is an open-access resource for any analyst wanting to use sterols as varietal markers for edible oil identification.
The reference has been added to FAN’s searchable list of food authenticity databases.
Tert-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) is an effective anti-oxidant in edible oils. It is an approved additive for this use (preservative in oils) in the EU – E319. However, it has a poor reputation in the media and amongst some consumer groups, and many packaged food brand-owners and large restaurant chains have internal polices that prohibit its use due to “clean label” or customer safety concerns. TBHQ is therefore a prime candidate for undeclared use in the business-to-business supply of edible oils or for inclusion above the maximum levels conditional to its legal use.
This paper (purchase required) reports the development and validation of a point-of-use test strip to detect TBHQ in edible oils. The fluorescent immunochromatographic assay can be read within 15 min, and semi-quantified using a smartphone reader. The limit of quantification was calculated as 003 ug/mL.
Photo by Roberta Sorge on Unsplash
Abstract
Highlights
DNA from rice and corn detected in honey spiked with 1% syrup.
Natural marker amplification in honey was used to develop an adulteration threshold.
Plastid markers were more efficient for adulteration detection in honey.
The method was successful with different syrups and various honey types.
Honey is a valuable and nutritious food product, but it is at risk to fraudulent practices such as the addition of cheaper syrups including corn, rice, and sugar beet syrup.
Honey authentication is of the utmost importance, but current methods are faced with challenges due to the large variations in natural honey composition (influenced by climate, seasons and bee foraging), or the incapability to detect certain types of plant syrups to confirm the adulterant used.
Molecular methods such as DNA barcoding have shown great promise in identifying plant DNA sources in honey and could be applied to detect plant-based sugars used as adulterants. In this work DNA barcoding was successfully used to detect corn and rice syrup adulteration in spiked UK honey with novel DNA markers.
Different levels of adulteration were simulated (1 – 30%) with a range of different syrup and honey types, where adulterated honey was clearly separated from natural honey even at 1% adulteration level. Moreover, the test was successful for multiple syrup types and effective on honeys with different compositions. These results demonstrated that DNA barcoding could be used as a sensitive and robust method to detect common sugar adulterants and confirm syrup species origin in honey, which can be applied alongside current screening methods to improve existing honey authentication tests.
Read full article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2024.110772
Trading standards officials from Oxfordshire, a UK local authority, examined the labels and undertook testing of 90 pre-packed foods on sale in their region during 2023/24. These were mainly from retail outlets but included a few online sales. It is not stated whether these were random samples, or targeted at where officers expected to find problems.
They found that 52 per cent of the on-pack (or on-line descriptor) labels failed to comply with food standards laws, while 13 per cent failed compositional tests.
Labelling issues identified included:
The announcement of the results is here.
Photo by Peter Bond on Unsplash
This study (open access) used a novel 2-stage chemometric approach to classify Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) vs Virgin Olive Oil (VOO) based upon an untargeted database of Visible and Near Infra-Red (NIR) spectra. Differentiating EVOO from VOO is one of the more difficult tasks of a sensory panel, and the authors propose that their new process is used as a screen before sensory testing.
In the first step, a one-class model is used to test whether the sample belongs to the target class of (EVOO + VOO) or whether it does not (i.e., that it is Lampeter Olive Oil, LOO). This is based on a PLS-DM model.
In the second step, a discriminant model was applied to those samples identified as “target class” to test if they better fitted as EVOO or VOO.
The authors conclude that their proposed approach is uniquely suited to addressing the analytical question “Differentiate between EVOO and VOO”.
In April 2024, members of the Global Alliance on Food Crime (GA) met in person for the first time since the COVID 19 pandemic. The meeting took place in Singapore over 2 days and tied in with the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) conference which was being held within the city at the same time. Representatives from all five founder member countries of the GA were in attendance, either in person or virtually for the duration of the meeting.
Since COVID, the group have met on-line twice a year to discuss matters of mutual interest, however, these meetings have had to take place late into the evening and early morning in order to allow for the time differences. Getting together face to face allowed most of the group to meet one another in person for the first time, which allowed for in depth discussion on an extensive agenda that covered the 2 day meeting. One of the main areas of discussion, however, focussed on the GA’s strategic objectives and how the group could deliver outcomes to support these. The strategic objectives are to:
It was clear that each member is already doing work in these 4 areas and a first step would be to capture all that work and consider where the focus needs to be moving forward.
Other things that were discussed at the meeting were current issues of note, emerging risks, crime prevention activities, good practice that could be shared and collaborative activity, amongst other matters. The group are planning to meet virtually towards the end of the summer and then again in person to tie in with the Operation Opson meeting that is taking place in November.
Regular updates on the work of the group will be posted the FAN GA page over the next 12 months.
For more information on the work of the Global Alliance please email ron.mcnaughton@fss.scot.
Notification of the Ministry of Public Health (No. 450) B.E.2567 (2024) has updated the Thai law for food labelling requirements. It has aligned the requirements for durability dates much more closely with Codex plus introduced many other changes, including repealing the requirement to differentiate “natural” from “synthetic” additives and introducing a new set of new rules around evidencing of health claims.
Key differences remain between Thai labelling law and EU/UK law. These include the mandatory-labelled allergens list (for example, Thailand includes squid) and the need (or not) to list ingredients in decreasing quantity order. Such differences highlight the need for a food manufacturer anywhere in the world, who is considering exporting to a new market, to get specialist advice on labelling requirements in the prospective market. It is not sufficient simply to translate the existing label into the local language.
A fuller report on the new requirements is here. They came into force on 19 July, with a 2 year window to sell-through existing product.
This paper (open access) reports the result of an analytical survey to verify the labelled species of prawn/shrimp on commercial sale in the Madrid area. The 55 prawns and prawn products were collected from supermarkets and fishmongers between October 2021 and June 2022. They included frozen, fresh and boiled products, and (nominally) represented 19 different species from 13 genera.
The researchers amplified the mitochondrial DNA (COI gene). Sequences were edited with MEGA 11 software 27 and compared against the GenBank database at the National Centre for Bio-technology Information (NCBI) using the Basic Local AlignmentSearch Tool (BLAST). The identification obtained by barcoding was compared with the species information collected at establishments/labels.
They found that almost 30% of supermarket products were mislabelled. These were almost exclusively frozen samples (95% of the total) regardless of its price point. Products from the Pacific Ocean seemed to be particularly susceptible to mislabelling.
On the basis of their findings, the authors recommend that Spanish consumers concerned about the veracity of species labelling should avoid supermarket frozen prawns and prawn products in preference of fresh products from fishmongers.
Photo by Daniel Lee on Unsplash
This paper (purchase required) provides an overview of the utilization of carbohydrates in food authentication since 2000, focusing on strategies involving carbohydrate-based markers, carbohydrate profiles, and carbohydrate-protein interaction-based assays.
The analytical techniques, applications, challenges and limitations of these strategies are reviewed and discussed. The findings demonstrate that these strategies offer origin verification, quality assessment, adulteration detection, process control, and food species identification. Notably, oligosaccharide analysis has proven effective in food authentication and remains a promising marker, especially for analyzing intricate matrices. The advances in chromatography separation and mass spectrometry identification of isomers and trace amounts of these compounds have facilitated the discovery of such markers.
The authors conclude that carbohydrate analysis can play a crucial role in food authentication. Future research and development will make the authentication of carbohydrate-rich foods ever more accurate and efficient.
Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash
In this paper (open access), researchers have developed and validated a specific qPCR panel to detect 5 common adulterants (cheaper vegetable/plant species) in each of paprika/chili, turmeric, saffron, cumin, oregano and black pepper.
They chose the adulterants to target in each spice from those reported in recent EU-wide surveillance testing and those that have been reported in the scientific literature. The researchers developed primers for each. They then developed methods based on SYBR™ Green qPCR, which is an extraction system particularly suited to dried herbs and spices. Herbs and spices can contain inhibitors, so the inclusion of a reference gene was critical. The specificity of primers and the potential for inhibition of each matrix and adulterant were meticulously investigated to highlight the limits of each method and how to handle them.
The authors conclude that their method is rugged and accessible. It is suitable for widespread roll-out to laboratories involved in spice authenticity testing. It quantifies each adulterant (30 in total – 5 for each of 6 herbs/spices) above the concentrations permitted by ISO standards for adventitious contamination, so can differentiate adulteration from contamination. It is particularly suitable for confirming, estimating or quantifying the presence of botanicals either identified by NGS screenings or suspects flagged by prior knowledge or investigations Full internal validation and interlaboratory validation will establish the limit of quantification, reproducibility and measurement uncertainties associated with the methods, allowing their deployment for official analyses, further supporting quality controls in the field of spices and herbs.
Graphical abstract from the paper.
For an introduction to the principles of qPCR see FAN’s method explainers for DNA-based techniques.
