FoodChainID have produced a free white paper “Current Food Supply Chain Threats – Is Your Company’s Brand Reputation At Risk?” The paper can be downloaded via the NutraIngredients site here. It cites the uncertainty in some regions about the future regulation of aspartame as an example of how to react to a rapidly developing regulatory situation in order to protect your brand. It also covers, at a high level, how to mitigate the risk of economically motivated adulteration. It particularly highlights the current heightened fraud risks relating to avocado oil and alcohol adulteration.
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This article reports the results of a survey of 50 Bangladeshi retail honeys, including both a premium multifloral (Sundarban) and premium monofloral varieties. Analysis was by isotope ration mass spectrometry (carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the protein fraction, plus carbon in the whole honey). 9 of the honeys were found to be adulterated with C4-sugar syrups when assessed using internationally-accepted criteria. The remaining 41 honeys were used to build an isotope-ratio classification model that can discriminate Bangladeshi honeys from other geographic origins and so can be used as a future classification tool. The work was funded by IAEA and we are grateful to co-author and FAN member Simon Kelly for providing this author’s hyperlink which gives free access until November 24.
This article in Food Manufacture gives an overview of how to assess the risk of bribery within your supply chain and how to mitigate those risks. The article is written by Tenet Law from a UK perspective but the principles are universal. It will be of interest, particularly, to directors of any company trading in the US who are often acutely aware of their personal liability under US law. The article describes how to mitigate risk by onboarding suppliers, by ongoing due diligence and by regular contract monitoring.
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An article by legal firm Potter Clarkson gives insight from a Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA) follow-up to Europol’s Operation Opson. The DVFA concluded that many food manufacturers were too liberal in the way they used protected food origins or descriptors – such as parmesan cheese or La Mancha wine – on their products. Legally-protected terms cannot be used without evidence from ingredient suppliers to back them up. Although the DVFA concluded that these were mainly “unconscious violations” they still broke EU (and UK) law. Potter Clarkson conclude that Danish violations are minor in comparison to other countries and that lack of legal compliance is an international problem. The article gives a good summary of EU law in this area.
Thanks again to FAN member Bruno Sechet of Integralim (www.integralim.net) who has formatted the JRC August food fraud report as this pictorial infographic.
The original report, along with those from previous months, can be found here.
Remember that you can sign up on the JRC website to be notified when each report is published.
One drawback of species testing by DNA is that it does not differentiate between poultry meat and egg nor between beef and milk. This can be problematic when authenticating vegetarian food. In this study (purchase required), nine marker peptides for the detection of meat (peptides common across several species) were identified using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS). These marker peptides enabled differentiation between meat and other animal products such as milk. The authors verified the technique using 19 commercial vegetarian meat substitutes containing milk and egg. They then tested over a wider sample set and proved the presence of the cross-species meat marker peptides in 19 food-relevant types of mammals and poultry as well as their absence in more than 136 plant-based ingredients for the production of vegan and vegetarian foods. They produced an in-house vegan sausage matrix based on a commercial retail product and spiked with 5.0%, w/w meat to confirm the high signal intensities and the heat stability of the marker peptides.
Photo by Grace O'Driscoll on Unsplash
The IAEA have developed training and a free Excel add-in for performing the types of multivariate analysis commonly used in food authenticity analysis. The add-in and associated e-learning training are available here. It is part of their "Nucleus" library of resources. If you do not have an IAEA Nucleus account then you will first have to register here to access the course.
Comparing the stable carbon isotope ratio of sugars and proteins is one way of checking for the adulteration of honey with C4 sugar syrups (e.g. corn syrup). Detecting C3 sugar syrups (e.g. from rice) is a lot more challenging and requires specialist and relatively expensive analytical equipment (e.g. 1H-NMR and/or LC-IRMS). A new method (purchase required) uses periodate oxidation of the sugars to produce formaldehyde, followed by reaction with ammonia to form hexamethylenetetramine (HMT). The hydrogen isotope ratio in HMT is measured by EA-IRMS, which is a much more “entry-level” isotopic analytical technique. The method was developed by the IAEA, mindful of the needs of low and middle income countries. The IAEA is developing a database, with its member States, to further correct for the natural variation in hydrogen isotope ratios, that has a geographical component also observed in techniques like SNIF-NMR.
One potential fraud is the undeclared bulking of meat products such as burgers and sausages with cheaper plant-based ingredients. The authors of this paper (purchase required) describe a rapid (20 hours), robust and sensitive method for the detection of 23 foreign protein sources (alfalfa, buckwheat, broad bean, chia, chickpea, coconut, egg, flaxseed, hemp, lentil, lupine blue, maize, milk, pea, peanut, potato, pumpkin, rapeseed, rice, sesame, sunflower, soy, and wheat) in meat products using high performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). It includes a new rapid defatting procedure, without carry-over effect and suitable for routine analysis, a robust protein extraction protocol (TRIS/HCl (1 M, pH 8.2) with 40% acetonitrile), suitable for various animal- and plant-based proteins including grain proteins, and new peptide markers for buckwheat and potato. An investigation of the influence of cooking (emulsion-type sausages), grilling (hamburger patties) and maturation (salamis) showed that the detection method is robust against different types of processing. The authors report that the limits of detection for all foreign protein sources were ≤ 0.02% protein and that no false-positive or -negative results were obtained.
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Honey authentication is an area where there is a continual “arms race” between analytical methods and methods of adulteration or other fraud. This review (open access) provides a comprehensive overview of honey authenticity challenges and related analytical methods. It describes direct and indirect methods of honey adulteration and the existing challenges in current detection methods and market supervision approaches. The authors focus on the advantages, disadvantages and scopes of integrated metabolomic workflows involving sample processing procedures, instrumental analysis techniques and chemometric tools. They discuss various improved microscale extraction methods combined with hyphenated instrumental analysis techniques and chemometric data processing tools. They conclude that the future of honey authenticity determination will involve the use of simplified and portable methods, which will enable on-site rapid detection and transfer detection technologies from the laboratory to the industry.
Earlier this year, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) commissioned the UK National Reference Laboratory for GMOs based at LGC (Teddington), to deliver a desk-based review of the current state-of-the-art associated with methods for the potential detection of (PBOs) in the food and feed supply chains.
Precision Bred Organisms represent organisms which possess genetic variability resulting from the application of modern biotechnology, which could also have arisen through traditional processes. In March 2023 the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act was passed in the UK, which brought forward primary legislation to amend the regulatory definition of a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), to exclude from it those organisms that have genetic changes that could also have arisen through traditional processes.
The report, written by Malcolm Burns and Gavin Nixon, captures use of sector specific terminology and related international developments. A focus is given on the current scope and challenges for the analytical detection of specific DNA sequences alongside supportive traceability tools inclusive of reference materials and databases. The report provides a series of recommendations towards helping develop a framework for the traceability of PBOs as well as some of the future analytical challenges this presents.
The report will be of interest to scientists and analysts involved in developing molecular biology assays for the detection of small DNA sequence changes, government departments and related stakeholders involved in assessing the efficacy of methods for the traceability of PBOs, as well as to a broader audience (e.g., academia, industry, retailers, etc.,) who are interested in some of the scope and challenges that detection of PBOs may present.
Baltic salmon is relatively low value, because of concern about environmental contaminants, and can be fraudulently substituted for salmon from more premium origins. These very pollutants have been used by a recent study (purchase required) as an analytical marker for geographic origin. The authors used public data from national surveys of dioxins and PCB congeners in salmon to train a Machine Learning classification model. The model could differentiate Baltic salmon from other origins (China, Chile, Canada, Norway, USA, and Vietnam) based on their analytical profile of chlorinated persistent organic pollutants.
Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash
It has been reported that Spanish authorities have siezed 28 tonnes of food with tampered expiry dates. The food is unfit for human consumption. Items were found in the facilities of companies in the provinces of Zaragoza, Valencia, and Almería, according to the Guardia Civil. Officials said meat products, frozen fish, and other items were sold with expired shelf life dates, manipulated labels, and irregularities in traceability. Eight people were arrested, and another 81 are being investigated for crimes, including fraud, public health offenses, and document falsification.
A masters thesis project sampled 106 retail packs of frozen shrimp (prawns) on sale in California and tested them for declared weight (i.e. excluding glaze), declared species and declared country of origin. 26% of samples had >20% glaze and 37% were legally underweight, rising to 57% in the super/extra colossal shrimp category. Ambiguous or incorrect species labelling was also observed in 37% of samples. The vast majority (98%) of country of origin labels were verified as correct.
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The purpose of this review (purchase required) was to identify the most susceptible cheese type for fraud and the most commonly reported methods for evaluating fraud in all types of cheeses. The authors conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature. They conclude that Mozzarella cheese was most reported to be adulterated or at risk of adulteration. The methods that were most used in detecting fraud were PCR and spectrometry methods, with less use being made of stable isotope, image analysis, electrophoretic, ELISA, sensors, near-infrared and NMR. The least used method was sensory evaluation.
The authors of this study (here – purchase required) recommend a protocol for authenticity testing of processed meats that combines PCR with histology. PCR indicates species substitution whilst histology indicates substitution with cheaper organs from the same species. They reported that, for a market survey of 105 sausages and beef hams in Iran, neither technique on its own gave a true picture; in fact, by PCR alone, all of the sausage samples would have been reported as unadulterated. It was only by combining the techniques that they found over 55% of the hams and 65% of the sausages to be adulterated, mainly with cheaper tissues from the same species. It proves the continued value of histology, which requires experienced microscopists to interpret slides; an increasingly rare skill within routine analytical laboratories.
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A recent publication (here – open access) describes the development and validation of a smartphone reader to combat the previously reported fraud of adding red dye to cheaper species of tuna and passing them off as Thunnus thynnus (red tuna). The red colour is associated with freshness in the minds of consumers. The authors built a reference database of colourimetric readings (as CE XYZ data) using a spectroradiometer. This classified tuna by species and/or by adulteration with beetroot extract. They then used the pro camera on a commercial smartphone (Galaxy 7) to read test samples. Reading with the smartphone required a dark room. They used statistical functions to convert the camera’s RGB reading to CEXYZ and an achromatic reference sample to convert to CIELAB colour space to then match samples against the classification model. They reported good matching, with a 0.6% false negative rate and 10% false positive rate for validation samples classified as adulterated or mis-labelled.
The Insider Business US TV documentary “11 of the most faked foods in the world” has now been posted on YouTube and is generating interest (2M views in 3 days). They cover truffles, maple syrup, wasabi, Parmesan cheese, vanilla, caviar, honey, olive oil, Wagyu beef, coffee and saffron. For each, they describe why it is a premium product and how it could be adulterated or substituted. They do not discuss why they chose these foods as the “most faked” or justify the conclusion that consumer purchases in the US are “probably faked” but they do discuss examples and case studies.
Laser Photo-Acoustic Spectroscopy (LPAS) can be used to obtain a spectrum of dried herbs and then classification models can be built to detect adulteration. It is analogous in this way to conventional Infra-Red spectroscopy. The advantage of LPAS is the power of the source; a laser, vs a lamp. In this publication (a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed) the authors report the development of an LPAS system trained and calibrated to detect olive leaf adulteration in oregano down to 20% and ideal for in-line use in an industrial setting.
A recent paper (purchase required) describes a feasibility study to use non-destructive ultrasonic inspection to detect olive oil adulteration with two other edible vegetable oils (sunflower and corn). Pulsed ultrasonic signals with a frequency of 2.25 MHz were used. Test samples were adulterated in variable percentages between 20% and 80%. The viscosity and density values were shown to correlate with acoustic parameters (ultrasound pulse velocity, frequency variables obtained from the Fast Fourier Transform, and attenuation) when measured at both 24 °C and 30 °C. Acoustic parameters were able to discriminate adulteration at all of the percentages and mixes studies. The responses obtained through the parameters related to the components of velocity, attenuation, and frequency of the ultrasonic waves are complementary to each other. The authors concluded that classification of pure and adulterated oil samples is possible through non-destructive ultrasonic inspection.
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