News

We are pleased to acknowledge the expertise of two more specialist authenticity testing laboratories and add them to our Centres of Expertise network. 

• University of East Anglia
• Chelab (Tentamus TCF²) GmbH

As well as providing incident-response support to the UK government and facilitating a laboratory network to share analytical best practice, we hope that our CoE listings help our (non-analyst) members to navigate to laboratories that could help with specific issues.  Recognition as a CoE is not an endorsement by FAN, and the list is not an exclusive or exhaustive guide to commercial laboratory capabilities, but it is an acknowledgment of existing expertise and capability in highly specialist areas.

If you are a laboratory interested in applying then look out for ther 2024 call in our Newsletter later this month.

This paper (open access) reports the results of a structured survey of Finnish food businesses; both how they mitigate fraud risks at a corporate level and – separately – how employees view fraud risks and culture within their own company.

The first survey was targeted at representatives of Finnish food businesses operating in food production, wholesalers, and central firms (N = 98). While many food business operators (FBOs) had experience of fraudulent practices, they often thought that their businesses were well prepared to prevent food fraud. The businesses used different methods in assessing the reliability of their suppliers, such as buying from familiar businesses and using networks to gain information, but public registers, such as the Tax debt register, were rarely used.

The second survey targeting the employees of ten Finnish food production businesses (N = 691) underwent logistic regression analysis. Differences in perceived possibility of internal fraud in the business, organizational integrity, and wrongness of certain fraudulent practices were found based on respondent and business characteristics. Specialists and directors less often fully agreed on the possibility of internal fraud than workers. In addition, specialists, directors and experienced employees reported high organizational integrity more often than workers and less experienced employees.

The results highlight that food businesses should take notice of both external and internal food fraud prevention by thoroughly assessing the food fraud risks in their operations and enforcing good organizational culture.

This paper (open access) reviews trends in EU RASFF notifications for Sudan dye adulteration of palm oil.  Although there was a sharp decrease in cases after the issue was first reported in 2004, and widespread testing introduced, the problem has not gone away and reported incidents have stayed steady for nearly 20 years.  The economic motivation to disguise cheaper oils as palm oil using a red dye is perennial.  Much of the adulterated produce originates from West Africa, and there is evidence that the problem is worst for palm oil on the local market than for exports.

The authors recommend cheaper, portable tests such as NIR as alternatives to traditional laboratory testing that can be used for verification.  Although detection limits and confidence in identification cannot match techniques such as LC-MSMS, NIR can detect around 0.01-0.05% which is sufficient for economically-motivated adulteration in the crude palm oil.

Chart from the paper

The aim of this section is to explain some of the more common techniques used for food authenticity testing in plain language to give stakeholders context by which they can both choose appropriate test methods and interpret results reported in certificates of analysis.  We would value your feedback (Secretary@foodauthenticity.global) on whether we have achieved this, and whether the explainers could be improved in either pitch or content. 

We will be adding more methods over the next few weeks. The first to go live are Mass Spectrometry and Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis. Content was written by Mark Woolfe, and reviewed by scientists from our Centres of Expertise laboratories and the FAN Executive Team, and we are extremely grateful for their in-kind time contributions.

These explainers were one of the priorities identified by our government Funding Partners and we are grateful to them for funding their development.  If you would like to join our funding partners then please get in touch.

A video guide on how to navigate to the new page is here.

The most common method for detecting the fraudulent dilution of vinegar with synthetic acetic acid is SNIF-NMR.  Discrimination relies upon marginal differences in the stable isotope ratio of atoms at certain positions within the acetic acid molecular structure, dependent upon the synthetic pathway of the molecule.  SNIF-NMR requires large sample sizes and long preparation times, and lacks transferability between laboratories.

Researchers have published (purchased required) an alternative method to discriminate acetic acid on a similar basis but using GC-pyrolysis-IRMS, using a sample preparation protocol that mitigates the problem of isotope-exchange with water.  Although this method still uses specialist expensive laboratory equipment it is faster and more sensitive than SNIF-NMR.  The authors consider the two methods to be complementary for building a body of analytical evidence.

Graphical abstract from the paper

Under new UK legislation, coming into force later this year, organisations will be liable for fraud conducted by their employees or agents.  This can be employees or agents at any level of seniority.  Fines are potentially unlimited -  a similar law already applies to failure to prevent bribery, and a recent corporate fine was over £400m.  At the same time, the Serious Fraud Office has signalled an intent to become more proactive under new leadership.  There has already been evidence of this in other industries, with a recent increase in dawn raids on both business premises and the homes of Directors.

There is a “due diligence” defence against this new Failure to Prevent Fraud offence, and companies are advised to act now to ensure they have best practice mitigation in place.  Good mitigation is the type of practical steps that are emphasised on FAN and all food fraud mitigation guides, including

• Review compliance policies and procedures to address gaps in relation to fraud offences
• Ensure portfolio companies have sufficient oversight/controls over their agents and other third-party intermediaries
• Provide training on fraud risks to staff so they are alert to “red flags”
• Encourage staff to speak up if they have concerns, and provide clear guidance on how they can report issues

(from Latham & Watkins legal blog)

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Headlines:

• Food fraud reports published by global regulatory agencies during 2023 do not provide evidence of a consistent, significant trend during 2023.
• The activity associated with official food fraud and food safety reports remained fairly consistent across the four quarters of 2023.
• The top three commodities with the most food fraud reports varies depending on the source of reports and the tool used:
• Using official reports only, ‘Fruit, vegetables & legumes’, ‘Milk & diary products’ and ‘Beverages’ are the top three.   
• Using official, media & peer reviewed publication reports, ‘Honey’, ‘Herbs & Spices’ and ‘Meat & Poultry’ are the top three.
• The number of official food fraud reports published, by an average of thirty-six sources, is very low at only ~9% of food safety reports.
• Botanical origin fraud was the most reported type of food fraud in 2023, followed by dilution or substitution, and animal origin fraud.

FAN has collaborated with the providers of three leading commercial food fraud incident collation tools (FoodChain ID Food Fraud Database, HorizonScan and Safety HUD) to produce this report, which provides a summary of global food fraud reports in 2023. This report is the first annual report to be produced for this FAN Partner project. 

We are grateful to our Partners (McCormick & Company, Dr Ehrenstorfer and LGC Axio, Tenet Compliance & Litigation, the Food Industry Intelligence Network, the Institute of Food Science & Technology, SSAFE, Tesco, and BRCGS (LGC Assure)) for funding this work.

For 2024, Gold and Platinum FAN Partners will be sent a quarterly dashboard at the end of each quarter.

Read full report.

Researchers have evaluated recent developments in nutrition science, analytical technology and the continuing evolution of statutory regulations and conclude that most current international reference methods are no longer fit-for-purpose to accurately determine vitamin content in foods and food supplements.

They recommend that new and/or updated reference methods and regulatory standards should be considered for the analysis of vitamins A, D, E, K, B₁, B₂, B_3, B₅, B₆, B₇, B₉, B₁₂, C and carotenoids in foods and food supplements.

They also state that this area of nutrients may benefit from globally harmonised definitions specifying what compounds to include or exclude for analysis, and applicable bioactivity factors. 

Read open access paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.139383

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

The US Department for Justice has launched a pilot prosecution immunity protocol for corporate fraud whistleblowers.  It only applies to the first report received, so is intended to be an incentive for a “race to report”.   Lisa Monaco, Deputy Attorney General, phrased it as “When everyone needs to be first in the door, no one wants to be second – regardless of whether they’re an innocent whistleblower, a potential defendant looking to minimize criminal exposure, or the audit committee of a company where the misconduct took place.”  In order to qualify for the scheme

• An individual must voluntarily self-disclose original and non-public information about criminal misconduct.
• The information must relate to one of six types of violations committed by financial institutions or public or private companies, including money laundering, the integrity of financial markets, foreign corruption and bribery, healthcare fraud and illegal kickbacks, fraud related to federally funded contracting, and the payment of bribes or kickbacks to public officials.
• The information must be truthful and complete,
• The individual must fully cooperate with the DOJ in its investigation and prosecution, including by providing testimony and evidence.
• The individual must forfeit any profit from the misconduct and pay restitution or victim compensation.
• Certain individuals are ineligible for the pilot, including chief executive officers, chief financial officers and their equivalents.

Photo by Nathan Shively on Unsplash

In this publication (open access) the authors studied 22 types of commonly traded herbal spices belonging to 20 different genera and 21 species comprising 14 families.  They examined them macroscopically and organoleptically as well as by microscope.

They provide details and photographs to characterise samples including appearance, taste, odor, color, shape, size, fractures, types of trichomes, and the presence of lenticels.  These features are useful for the detection of both natural as well as artificial deterioration.

In terms of microscopic characterization, each plant part has different anatomical characteristics with taxonomic importance and also provides useful information for authentication from natural adulterants.  They include different herbal parts such as leaves, floral buds, seeds, fruit, and accessory parts like mericarp, rhizome, bulbs, and bark, as commercially traded. Similarly the authors have observed and published features of the leaves of Cinnamomum tamala and Mentha spicata, the floral buds of Syzygium aromaticum, the seeds of Amomum subulatum, Brassica nigra, Punica granatum, Myristica fragrans, Phyllanthus emblica, and Elettaria cardamomum, the mericarp of Coriandrum sativum, and Cuminum cyminum.

Image – mustard seed, from the publication.

This paper (open access) describes the development of a new sorbent to extract tartrazine from fake saffron in a 1-step procedure.  Extraction was by dispersive micro- Solid Phase Extraction using a novel metal–organic framework containing iron single atoms doped on electrospun carbon nanofibers.  Tartrazine could then be measured by HPLC with Photo Diode Array detection; a widely available and relatively cheap technique.

The authors optimised the extraction conditions and reported that the calibration curve was linear in the range of 5–1000 ng/mL, with a correlation coefficient of 0.992. The LOD and LOQ values ranged 0.38–0.74 and 1.34–2.42 ng/ml, respectively. They concluded that advantages of this method included high extraction recovery (98%), and accuracy (RSDs < 0.75 to 3.6%). with enrichment factors in the range of 80.6–86.4 with preconcentration factor of 22.3.

Photo by mana5280 on Unsplash

Wireless gas-sensing technology can be utilized to monitor food freshness in real time to prevent food fraud and spoiled food consumption.  Nanoflake sensors have the advantage over traditional gas sensors that they do not need excessive heat or power consumption, making them ideal for such real-time applications.  There are sensors available for many nitrogen-containing gaseous indicators of spoilage, including reduced graphene oxide (rGO) which is selective for ammonia.

In this work (open access) the authors coupled a high-sensitivity ammonia gas sensor with Bluetooth technology to produce a wireless communication system for live tracking beef freshness. They used a chemiresistive gas sensor containing hydrothermally produced sulfur-rich WS₂/rGO hierarchical nanoflakes for gas sensing in real time. This nanohybrid was evaluated using various physicochemical techniques, including XRD analysis, HR-SEM, FE-TEM, FTIR spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and XPS.

They reported that the sensitivity of the sulfur-rich WS₂/rGO nanohybrid towards NH₃ was twice as high as that of pristine sulfur-rich WS₂ with an LOD of 0.5 ppb and a response of 7.5%. The NH₃-sensing mechanism was attributed to a negative charge donated by NH₃ on the positively charged sulfur-rich WS₂/rGO composite, which enabled it to interact with certain functional groups (SO₃H, –OH, and H₂O) and enhanced the resistance of the material. The composite had a 3.7-fold greater response to NH₃ than to other volatile organic compounds and good stability after 25 cycles.

They concluded that the system was practical for real-time monitoring of beef in the supply chain and, coupled with AI, could be used to detect anomalies (i.e. indicators of fraud)

Thanks, as always, for FAN member Bruno Sechet for collating the JRC’s monthly collation of global food fraud media reports into this helpful infographic.

The original JCR report can be found here.  It is free to sign up for alerts when each new report is published.

It is important to remember that these are media reports.  Analysis of official reports often gives a different picture.  EU official reports of “suspicions” are now published here, and FAN will soon be sharing our analysis of global trends in official reports.

Shockingly it is still the case that, although food authenticity often is seen through the prism on technical compliance in many large food manufacturing companies, food adulteration can be a matter of life or death in local produce in some parts of the world.

A Spanish translation of our 2023 Annual Summary has been published here.  Thanks to Merry Rivas for this first step in making our resources more accessible to members who do not have English as a first language.  More language translations are set to follow.

Urea is an adulteration risk in milk, particularly in areas of the world with less systematic or industrialised supply chains.  It is already a natural component of milk but is also cheaply and widely available.  Adding urea to milk increases the nitrogen content, hence increasing the apparent protein, enabling the milk to be diluted with water.  It is not a sophisticated fraud.

Researchers at Baba Mastnath University have developed and published (open access) a simple onsite sensor to measure urea in milk that can be used in the field.  It is based on urease enzymes on a nylon membrane attached to an ammonium ion-selective electrode.  The biosensor gave a rapid 20-second response time at pH 5.5, detecting urea concentrations between 0.001 and 0.80 mM.  The authors validated with recovery experiments from milk spiked with urea (recoveries were above 97%) and went on to characterise the typical natural urea background concentration in milks from different regions of Northern India.  They found that their sensor compared favourably with other urea potentiometric biosensors and with other laboratory-based test methods.

Food Fraud Prevention – Types of Products

Welcome! In support of the Food Authenticity Network (FAN) activity, this new 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 and scope of food fraud and the subsequent blog post on the types of fraud. We will continue the discussion by examining the types of fraud. The next blog post will review the application of quality management and risk management to expand the focus from detection to prevention and risk to vulnerability.

Early food fraud research and publications focused on what food fraud is or how big the problem is. The research evolved into several paths: incident reviews, detection or authentication development, criminology, and strategic management. Some of the strategic management research included our peer-reviewed, scholarly, SCOPUS-listed publication on Defining the Public Health Threat of Food Fraud, Introducing the Food Fraud Initial Screening model (FFIS), Introducing the Food Fraud Prevention Cycle (FFPC), and Defining the types of counterfeiters, counterfeiting, and offender organizations. Together, the research projects revealed that criminals will attack in just about any way imaginable and most quickly and easily. Together, the research projects emphasized that criminals will  attack by ANY fraud act against ANY product. Thus, to holistically reduce food fraud, we need to focus on ALL types of fraud and for ALL products. We can either complain about this very broad scope or be practical and expand our collective focus on all types of fraud and for all products.

Here, the ‘products’ are not individual commodities such as olive oil, seafood, or spices, but are supply chain inventory types of products such as raw materials, ingredients, work-in-process, or finished goods (see MSU Introduction to Supply Chain Management/ SCM303).

The broad focus on ‘all hazards’ – or for food fraud prevention, for ‘all vulnerabilities’ – is consistent with food safety and HACCP. For example (emphasis added): “HACCP is a management system in which food safety is addressed through the analysis and control of biological, chemical, and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement, and handling, to manufacturing, distribution, and consumption of the finished product” (FDA 2017).”

A food fraud incident can occur in any type of product, so all are within the scope of a food fraud prevention strategy.

While a manufacturer or producer has the most control of THEIR raw materials and incoming goods, their customers are worried about fraud at any point along THEIR entire supply chain – or all products.

This blog post will review the food fraud types of products.

Food Fraud & Definition (From various sources including GFSI and SSAFE with definitions from adapted from Supply Chain Management textbooks):

• Raw Materials/ Commodities: A component of a food, feed or packaging that has not undergone processing (GFSI).
• Incoming Goods/ Ingredients: A component that is being received including food, or feed that has undergone processing (GFSI).
• Incoming Goods/ Packaging: A component that is being received including packaging that has undergone processing (GFSI).
• Work-in-process-manufacturing: product that is actively being transformed from ingredients to finished goods.
• Work-In-process-inventory: product that is actively being transformed but is being held idle while waiting for an additional step to complete the transition finished goods.
• Finished goods in inventory: product that has completed a transformation and is ready to deliver to a customer but it is being held in storage.
• Finished goods in the marketplace: product that has completed a transformation and is being held in a location or format that is ready for a customer to procure.
• Distributors, Wholesalers, and Resellers: firms that sell or deliver merchandise to retail stores or other types of customers.
• Returned goods and reverse logistics: the process of moving finished goods that have been distributed to the marketplace back to the origin or a location to receive, dispose, or rework product.
• Waste disposed, used packaging, and off-specification products: products that have been partially consumed or otherwise determined to be used or unacceptable for further use.

The types of food products are intentionally broad – holistic and all-encompassing- to frustrate the criminal against action of any kind.

Watch out for the next blog, which will review the application of quality management and risk management to expand the focus from detection to prevention and risk to vulnerability,

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

References:

• 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
• Spink, John, Moyer, Douglas C, & Speier-Pero, Cheri (2016). Introducing the Food Fraud Initial Screening Model (FFIS), Food Control, Volume 69, November 2016, Pages 306-314, URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713516301219 .
• Spink, John; Zhang, Guangtao; Chen, Weina & Spier-Pero, Cheri; (2019). Introducing the Food Fraud Prevention Cycle (FFPC): A Dynamic Information Management and Strategic Roadmap, Food Control, 105 (November 2019), 233-241, URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713519302567
• Spink, J., Moyer, DC, Park, H., and Heinonen, J. (2013/2017) Defining the Types of Counterfeiters, Counterfeiting, Offender Organizations, Crime Science Journal, Volume 2, Number 8, pp. 1-10, URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1541-4337.12033/abstract

This article (open access) reviews papers published 2018-2023 that use analysis of phenols, coupled with chemometrics, in order to classify extra virgin olive oil (EVOO).

The authors conclude that the best classification systems with most potential for wider use were achieved by databases that combined phenols with other parameters. Tthe application of untargeted metabolomics for discovering authenticity markers for different cultivars and origins is still relatively scarce.

They also stressed that factors such as climate, cultivar location and agronomic practices, extraction, and processing conditions, as well as storage may affect oil composition including sterols and phenols profiles. Another confounding aspect is that most of the commercial oils are sold as blends, where a contribution of both the cultivars used and the geographical origin is expected.

They concluded that more investigations carried out on a higher number of samples are needed to strengthen the use of this analytical approach both for  geographic traceability and for botanical origin traceability. This review highlighted the fact that most papers did not take into consideration a significant number of samples, and that sometimes there is an unbalanced relationship between the number of samples of a specific cultivar, or a specific geographical origin. Among other points of weakness, research studies did not report the correct legal classification as indicated on the label or certified by official analytical methods/organization.

EVOO samples analyzed in the reviewed papers (2018–2023) were collected or produced in different ways.  The authors therefore recommended that future databases should be built from samples obtained with uniform, harmonized and reproducible extraction conditions and using validated and standardized analytical procedures coupled with appropriate chemometric approach. Such comprehensive information could be useful for the production of a database of the qualitative and quantitative profiles of phenols in PDO, PGI, and monovarietal and blend EVOO samples, obtained from different cultivars or different regions.

This review article (purchase required) covers recent developments in loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) devices, particularly when coupled with microfluidic chips, for applications as point-of-use tests for meat and seafood species authentication.

While PCR-based methods remain the gold standard for assessment of the species authenticity, the authors consider that there is an urgent need for alternative testing platforms that are rapid, accurate, simple, and portable. Owing to its ease of use, low cost, and rapidity, LAMP is becoming increasingly used method in food analysis. The authors outline how the features of LAMP have been leveraged for species authentication testing of meat and seafood products. LAMP detection is simple and rapid. To make it truly instrument-free it needs an end-point visual detection, and so the authors review the principles of various end-point colorimetry methods. They also summarise different strategies to either suppress the nonspecific amplification or to avoid the results of nonspecific amplification.

The US FDA have published their annual surveillance test results for imported honey authenticity.

They found 3 of 107 samples to be adulterated with syrups or sweeteners.  These were from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Yemen.  This compares with 14 of 144 samples reported as adulterated in the previous year (2021/2022).