News

The Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) is calling for the urgent modernizing of US food recall processes and the need to enhance data-sharing among federal, state, and local food safety and public health agencies to better protect consumers and ensure swift, effective responses to contamination events.

The recent lead chromate contamination incident in cinnamon applesauce pouches, in which it has been determined that toxic lead chromate was added to cinnamon for economic gain and sickened over 500 children in the US, AFDO say illustrates continued critical gaps in the US national food recall system.

This incident is a good example of where food fraud is also a food safety issue.

Read the full article here: Feature-Cover Story | August/September 2024 | Food Safety Magazine (food-safety.com)

Food Fraud Prevention – Mitigation and Prevention

Welcome! In support of the Food Authenticity Network (FAN) activity, this blog series reviews key topics related to food fraud prevention. Watch here for updates that explore the definitions of food fraud terms and concepts.

This blog post builds on our previous review of the definition of risk and vulnerability as it applies to reducing the occurrence of food fraud. The next blog post will continue the mindset shift that is needed when we consider mitigation and prevention.

The early food fraud prevention activities were created in response to ongoing incidents. Incidents such as Sudan Red, melamine, and horsemeat were ongoing events requiring quick action to find the product, remove it from the marketplace, and select detection tests to support immediate monitoring. This was the activation of ‘risk mitigation’ plans in terms of ‘rapid response systems.’ It seems that the early food fraud prevention activities were a natural continuation of ‘risk mitigation,’ so the concept of ‘mitigation’ was the critical focus of laws, regulations, standards, certifications, and industry practices (e.g., the GFSI requirement of a food fraud mitigation plan).

Risk mitigation is important, and the focus is reducing the impact of an event AFTER it occurs. During the response to an active crisis, mitigation was the critical focus.

HOWEVER, “The goal is not to catch food fraud but to prevent the event from ever occurring.” (Reference 1) While  food fraud mitigation is important, the more holistic and all-encompassing concept is ‘food fraud prevention.’ The proactive focus is on prevention, reducing the possibility that the event could occur.

Mitigation Shifting to Prevention

The following are excerpts from our article “Food Fraud Prevention Shifts Food Risk Focus to Vulnerability.” (Reference 1)

The countermeasures include mitigation and prevention.

• Mitigation is intended to reduce the consequence of the event (ISO, 2007a; ISO, 2007; ISO, 2007b; DHS, 2013; Merriam-Webster, 2004). This assumes the hazard event will occur, so the goal is to mitigate or reduce the negative consequence. This focuses on reducing the risk that cannot be eliminated.
• Prevention is intended to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of the event occurring (ISO, 2007; ISO, 2007a; ISO, 2007b; ISO, 2008; Merriam-Webster, 2004). This focuses on identifying and eliminating or reducing vulnerability

Plan Shifting to Strategy

It might seem like an academic discussion, but it is also important to consider the expansion of a ‘plan’ to a ‘strategy’ – from a food fraud mitigation plan to a food fraud prevention strategy.

• Plan (ISO 15289, 24748): information item that presents a systematic course of action for achieving a declared purpose, including when, how, and by whom specific activities are to be performed
• Strategy (ISO 9000, 29995) plan to achieve a long-term or overall objective (3.7.1); plan to accomplish the organization’s (3.2.1) mission (3.7.18) and achieve the organization’s vision (3.7.17)

So, a ‘mitigation plan’ was key during the initial crisis management, but the longer-term goal was a ‘prevention strategy.’

Watch out for the next blog, which will review the application of ISO 31000 Risk Management and the concepts of likelihood versus probability and consequence versus severity.

If you have any questions on this blog, we’d love to hear from you in the comments box below.

References:

1. Spink, John, Ortega, David, Chen, Chen, and Wu, Felicia (2017). Food Fraud Prevention Shifts Food Risk Focus to Vulnerability, Trends in Food Science and Technology Journal, Volume 62, Number 2, Pages 215-220, URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924224416304915

2  Spink, J, and Moyer, DC, (2011) Defining the Public Health Threat of Food Fraud, Journal of Food Science, Volume 75 (Number 9), p. 57-63, URL: https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2011.02417.x

The recent Technology Networks online symposium "Advances in Food and Beverage Analysis" featured a FAN discussion panel on the use of untargeted analysis for food authenticity verification.  The discussion covers, from an analyst or researcher's view, best practice in constructing and maintaining databases, deriving classification models, and validating the models.

Panelists Kate Kemsley (University of East Anglia, UEA) and Cathy Frankis (RSSL) give their valuable insight and experience.  UEA and RSSL are two of FAN's Centres of Expertise laboratories.  We hope that this type of discussion panel proves a useful and accessible way of sharing their expertise and best practice.

A full recording of the session (1 hour) is available here

(hosted on my website as filesize too large for FAN)

This study (purchase required) builds on previously reported work that used real-time Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) assays to detect a single GM target. To increase the efficiency and scope of the assay,  the authors have developed a multiplex real-time LAMP simultaneously targeting Figwort Mosaic Virus promoter (P-FMV) that constructs region between the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus 35S promoter and cry1Ac gene (p35S-cry1Ac) and neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII) marker gene. The assay could detect as low as 0.1% for each GM target within 45 minutes.

The authors believe that this configuration and application - multiplexing in real-time LAMP using the Genie II system with applicability in GM detection – is novel. They conclude that the developed method provides rapid, on-site, and real-time GM detection in seeds and food products.

For an explanation of LAMP, see FAN’s analytical method explainers on DNA techniques.

Graphical abstract from the paper.

The UK Food Standards Agency has published a report  (available here – free to download) that reviews analytical methods to verify Country of Origin labelling of food and feed.  It covers Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis, trace element profiling, metabolomics profiling, genomics, proteomics and emerging techniques.  The review included a full literature review alongside structured interviews with stakeholders.

Each section of the review concentrates on a type of analytical technique and draws together the reports on commodities which have been analysed using that technique. A critique of the techniques is given together with recommendations on their capability and limitations. An outlook section for each technique provides insight for future development potential together with a summary of the most mature methods which demonstrate capability to verify origin for various food commodities.  The most promising techniques are listed for each food commodity.  Fish and shellfish are identified as a particular gap where there is no obvious analytical technique to address the challenge.

The report also discusses other verification solutions such as digital traceability systems.

A link to the report has been indexed in FAN's research pages.

This new guidance sets out sets a general framework of measures and preventive actions to be taken to improve food security and resilience, common to all Member States but also applicable to any country or even to a food manufacturing or hospitality businsess.  It is written at a strategic level, laying out principles rather than detail.  For example, it covers the need to diversify supply chains and the need to practice crisis managment.

It builds upon a previous report published by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in November 2023 which identified 28 risk categories (biophysical and environmental, economic and market, socio-cultural and demographic, geopolitical and institutional, supply chain performance, information and technology) and nine main factors of vulnerabilities.

In this study (purchase required), the authors used one-class and multiclass methods applied to ATR-FTIR data to classify a set of 80 diluted and undiluted soy milks. The unequal dispersed classes (UNEQ), soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA), data driven SIMCA (DD-SIMCA), and one-class random forest (OC-RF) methods were used for one-class modeling. Models were constructed using the non-adulterated samples as target class and the adulterated samples as non-target class. The k-nearest neighbors (k-NN), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), dual class random forest (DC-RF), and dual class random forest with Monte Carlo sampling (DC-RF-MC) methods were used for multiclass modeling.

For k-NN and PLS-DA, samples were organized into four classes (non-adulterated samples, adulterated with 5% v∙v^-1, 10% v∙v^-1, and 20% v∙v^-1 of water). DC-RF models used the same class settings as one-class models.

The authors report that the results show the feasibility of ATR-FTIR and chemometrics models to identify adulteration of soy milk by diluting with water at levels from 5% upwards.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

Palm oil adulteration of coconut oil is typically tested by “wet-chemistry” analysis of fats and by assessing indicators such as the average chain length, saponification index, average molecular weight, iodine value, peroxide value and percentage of unsaturation.

This study (open access) shows that the same indicators can be measured, and the same interpretations drawn, using 400 mHz proton NMR.  The indicators are calculated indirectly from the chemical shift values for olefinic protons. The authors report that their results correlated well with classical analytical measurements.

They conclude that a single NMR spectroscopy test could replace the suite of conventional wet laboratory methods to test for this common adulteration risk.

Photo by Gerson Repreza on Unsplash

In this study (purchase required) the authors developed and optimised a species-specific colorimetric based LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) assay targeting the mitochondrial COI gene of three mussel species: Perna canaliculus, Mytilus galloprovincialis, and Perna virdis .  They compared it to conventional PCR assay..

The specificity was tested against non-targeted bivalves and the sensitivity was evaluated by using DNA with concentrations ranging from 3.12 ng/μL to 0.003 ng/μL. In-house validation for cooked mussels was determined by using various conditions of different cooking methods, including boiling , steaming, frying, and canning.

The developed LAMP assay provided accurate results at 63 °C for 30 min when visualized by colorimetric observation and agarose gel electrophoresis. The authors reported that LAMP and PCR showed similar specificity against three non-targeted bivalves while LAMP showed greater sensitivity than PCR for Asian green mussel and New Zealand mussels with the limit of detection 0.003 and 0.01 ng/reaction, respectively. Under optimal thermally processed conditions, both species-specific LAMP and PCR successfully authenticated three commercially important mussel species.

The authors conclude that the colorimetric LAMP assay developed in this study is simple, rapid, and convenient for authenticating mussel products.

For an explanation of LAMP, see FAN’s analytical methods explainers for DNA techniques.

Photo by Christopher Carson on Unsplash

This review (open access) aims to provide an overview of the European regulation for PDO and PGI certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) including the synonyms and common misclassifications relating to the definition of different cultivars.  The authors recommend Single Sequence Repeats (SSRs) as the best analytical marker to verify cultivars.and the main fraudulent practices in the olive oil sector. They have collated and published the marker SSRs for each protected culivar.

The authors conducted a deep check on the varieties used to produce the PDO and PGI EVOOs currently registered with the European Commission and they examined the publicly available SSR profiles for each variety in detail. All identified profiles have been collected and made available to the scientific community. They were able to highlight many synonymies (different names for the same variety) and homonymies (same name for different varieties), which should solve the confusion caused by the misnaming of olive varieties. Finally, the data collected were used to identify private alleles useful to identify the geographical origin of the olive varieties used in the oil production.

All the data and information collected here provide a useful and reliable tool for the varietal traceability and the authentication of the PDO and PGI EVOOs.

For an explanation of SSRs, see FAN’s analytical methods explainers for DNA techniques.

In this publication (open access) the authors used a chemometric approach to identify pork adulteration in cooked beef mince from GC-MS of the volatile flavour compounds.

They sourced pork and beef directly from an abattoir and then prepared cooked mince in the laboratory.  A total of four different groups of samples were made, two of them were pure (only beef & only pork) and two were adulterated. The adulterated mixed samples were prepared in two different ratios (80% beef and 20% pork; 60% beef and 40% pork). Each sample was pan roasted under standardised and controlled cooking conditions. The study utilized a total of 20 distinct animals

Volatile compounds were extracted and analyzed using headspace-solid-phase-microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-MS). Adulterated meat samples were effectively identified through principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Through variable importance in projection scores and a Random Forest test, 11 key compounds, including nonanal, octanal, hexadecanal, benzaldehyde, 1-octanol, hexanoic acid, heptanoic acid, octanoic acid, and 2-acetylpyrrole for beef, and hexanal and 1-octen-3-ol for pork, were robustly identified as biomarkers. These compounds exhibited a discernible trend in adulterated samples based on adulteration ratios, evident in a heatmap. Lipid degradation compounds strongly influenced meat discrimination. PCA and PLS-DA yielded significant sample separation, with the first two components capturing 80% and 72.1% of total variance, respectively.

The authors conclude that this technique could be a reliable method for detecting meat adulteration in cooked meat.

Photo by Andrew Valdivia on Unsplash

In this paper (open access, Chinese language) the authors report a quick method for detecting the authenticity of meat products based on multienzyme isothermal rapid amplification (MIRA) coupled with a lateral flow dipstick (LFD).

Pig, cattle, sheep, chicken, and duck-specific mitochondrial gene sequences were selected through GenBank, and intra-species conserved and inter-species specific target fragments were compared using the DNAStar Megalign software. According to the design principles of MIRA primers and probes, target gene-specific primer and probe sets were designed and screened systematically through positive, negative and blank controls to determine the species-specific primers and probes. The reaction system, temperature, and time were optimized.

The authors reported that the method performed well when assessed as a rapid point-of-use screening method.  The average false positive rate of this method was 3.49%, and the false negative rate was 3.54%, which meets the requirements of on-site rapid testing.

The UK’s Food and Drink Federation have updated their guide “Five Steps to Protect Your Business from Food Fraud”.  This free guide is relevant to food businesses of all sizes, but particularly useful for small businesses.  Download the new version here.

In this study (open access) the authors used untargeted UPLC-ESI-TOF MS (simultaneous acquisition of low- and high-collision energy) along with targeted analysis of some known markers to investigate differences due to the regional geographic origin of  Italian saffron and also adulteration with turmeric and paprika.

Although they found distinct chemometric classifications, these classifications did not correlate to geographical origin.  The classifications did, however, clearly differentiate between supermarket saffron and locally sourced “artisan” saffron.  The authors’ hypothesis is that classification is driven by differences in microclimate and fertilisation, rather than geographic origin per se.  Specific features were identified that could be used as quality markers, and the authors propose a number of new chemical markers for saffron quality.

Known adulterations with paprika and turmeric were detected at a limit of 10%.  They found that increasing cyclocurcumin concentration is a significant biomarker for turmeric contamination. The results correlated well with testing for the same adulteration using conventional and kinetic antioxidant assays.

In this paper (purchase required) the authors applied an open-access AI model that is routinely used in automated object recognition systems (You Only Look Once – YOLO) to honey authentication using microscopy of pollen. They created a data set comprising three well-known honey varieties (Sundarban, Litchi, and Mustard), supplemented by three sets of unidentified honey pollen images sourced from Kaggle (an open-access repository of machine learning data). They assembled a data set consisting of 3000 images representing the pollen types extracted from the known honey samples. To tackle the challenge of limited sample sizes, they employed data augmentation techniques.

They reported good statistical performance characteristics including detection accuracy, precision, recall, mAP value, and F1 score. They applied the model to Kaggle’s unknown honey pollen data sets, and reported that it correctly detected and identified these new pollens based on previous training.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL)  has published new guidelines on verification of dPCR methods.  These were developed by the international working group “Development of methods for identification of foodstuffs produced by means of genetic engineering techniques”.  The guideline provides practical recommendations for transferring the real-time PCR to digital PCR and for verifying the digital PCR method. The guideline is applicable to analysis of GMO in food, feed and seed.  It includes initial validation of the dPCR system (e.g. uncertainty in the reaction volume of each partition), transfer of conditions from RT-PCR to dPCR, dPCR performance criteria, and validation of duplex dPCR for transgene and reference gene quantification.

For an introductory explainer of dPCR see FAN’s analytical methods pages.

In this paper (open access) the authors present “PowDew”, an early-stage commercial system designed to detect counterfeit powdered infant formulas using only a commodity smartphone camera.

It works on the principle that different powdered formulas exhibit unique properties upon contact with liquid, discernible through a water droplet motion interacting with the powder., PowDew analyzes the droplet’s spreading and penetration, to infer information correlated to the powder properties such as wettability and porosity, which are key indicators of the formula’s authenticity.

The authors conducted  real-world experiments under varying conditions with different brands of powdered infant formula and adulterants. They reference a resultant 12,000 minutes of video recordings of the droplet motions on various infant formulas, including authentic and altered. The programme uses machine learning to extract features from the video frames.

They report that PowDew yielded an overall detection accuracy of up to 96.1% for this application, and consider that it could be trained on models for other applications by either industry QC testing or regulatory authorities..

Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash

In this study (purchase required) the authors developed a method using an electronic nose (e-nose) equipped with 8 metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensors to detect whey adulteration in powdered milk by analyzing volatile emissions.

They examined pure powdered milk adulterated with whey at six concentration levels (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%) in both dry and rehydrated forms. Statistical analyses, including Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), were employed to interpret the sensor output responses from the e-nose.

They reported that the ANN analysis demonstrated a total variance of 85%, with only eight out of 180 samples (4.4%) being misclassified in detecting whey adulteration in powdered milk. The model achieved a detection accuracy of 95.6%. Sensors MQ9 and TGS822 exhibited the most robust responses to wet samples, while sensors MQ136 and TGS822 showed the highest reactivity to dry test samples. PCA analysis revealed that the first principal component (PC-1) accounted for 90% of the total variance, whereas PC-2 contributed only 4% to the variance.

They conclude that their study offers insights into the application of an e-nose portable device that enables non-invasive analysis.  E-nose technology is a promising tool for rapid quality screening of commercial powdered milk.

Photo by julian mora on Unsplash

A report on best practice use of Point of Contact (POC) testing methods has been published by the UK Food Standards Agency and referenced on FAN's Research index page.

This report informs on the current state of the art and availability of POC instrumentation, technologies involved, current applications, commodity testing, gaps and limitations, and end-user requirements, with a specific focus on official controls.

The first phase of the project, which involved the horizon scanning, literature review and stakeholder engagement exercises, revealed that there was no harmonised definition of POC testing in the foods area, although this was generally understood to encompass portable analytical instrumentation which can be deployed at the point of sample testing throughout the food supply chain, often affording the potential to screen samples quickly and cost effectively.

The POC area encompassed technologies inclusive of rotational vibrational spectroscopy platforms (Near infrared (NIR), Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) and Raman), spectral imaging platforms (multi- and hyperspectral imaging), mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and biological analyte-based platforms (proteins and nucleic acid-based). In recent years, the areas of NIR, Raman and nucleic acid detection methods have shown increased interest. Topical commodity and food testing remains consistent with previous years, with areas inclusive of meat and fish speciation, herbs and spices adulteration, and testing for allergens continuing to remain at the forefront of analyses, but also being joined with quality and safety applications. Advantages and benefits of POC testing are generally well understood in terms of providing rapid, real-time results as part of screening approaches. The use of POC testing for official controls emphasised the potential of POC devices to provide a useful and cost-effective screening tool and the importance of method validation to provide objective evidence of the fitness for purpose was reiterated.

The second phase of the project was to establish a set of recommendations for developing an infrastructure for guidance for POC testing in the food sector as part of official controls. A detailed list of guidance and recommendations have been provided. Key aspects centre on the need to assess end-user requirements (the concept of operations) in addition to applying core method validation principles. Central recommendations also include the need for method validation to be performed on the specific combination of POC technology, instrument, application or commodity as per standard practice, to validate the method performance in the context of field-based setting at the point of application, to establish appropriate reference materials and databases, and to develop a centralised UK-based POC testing and advisory framework for provision of guidance and support as an aid to harmonisation.

Future work proposals were made, inclusive of developing a candidate POC test case for method validation to demonstrate cost-saving benefits, as well as a recommendation to further engage with regional official control groups to further assess regional variations and end-user requirements.

The “designer drug” nature of sildenafil-type adulterants in dietary supplements means that analytical reference standards are not always available. In this study (purchase required), a novel "standard-free detection of adulteration" (SFDA) method was proposed. “Designer” phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor derivatives were used as a test case. After analysis by quadrupole coupled time of flight-tandem mass spectrometry detection and multivariable statistics, six common fragment ions were chosen to indicate whether adulteration was present or not, while 20 characteristic fragment ions indicated whether adulteration was by nitrogen-containing heterocycles or by anilines. Quantitative methods targeting these fragments were then conducted by high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The authors conclude that this strategy allows for a quick determination of dietary supplement adulteration without any need for standard materials, improving the efficacy of food safety testing.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash