News

A law enforcement operation jointly coordinated by INTERPOL and Europol has highlighted the vast quantities of illicit food and beverage products circulating throughout the global economy.

Codenamed OPSON X, the operation mobilized police, customs, national food regulatory authorities and private sector partners to undertake coordinated enforcement actions between December 2020 and June 2021 against illicit food and drink posing serious health risks to consumers.

Operation OPSON X saw law enforcement globally net 15,451 tonnes of illegal products, with an estimated street value of EUR 53.8 million.  Nearly 68,000 checks were carried out by the 72 participating countries, resulting in more than 1,000 criminal cases being opened.                                                                                                                                                       
The enforcement actions have uncovered a wealth of new leads for food crime investigations. More than 600 arrest warrants were issued during the course of the operation, which is estimated to have disrupted the activities of 42 organized crime groups around the world.

The most seized goods in Operation OPSON X were alcohol and food supplements, followed by cereals and grain products. Alcoholic drinks were the most commonly counterfeited according to seizure results, as well as products protected by trademarks, geographic indications or appellations of origin.

Though not directly targeted in the operation, enforcement actions also turned up other illicit items, including fake test kits for COVID-19, HIV and malaria, cigarettes, weapons and ammunition, bush meat and other products of wildlife crime.

In Russia, police discovered a case containing more than 12,000 copies of pirated computer software, valued at around EUR 100,000. Meanwhile, Namibian authorities detected 24 irregular migrants during their actions carried out under OPSON X.

The most common types of food fraud include:

• mislabeling (42 percent)
• replacements/dilutions/additions/removals in product (20 percent)
• unapproved treatment and/or process (16 percent)
• document failings that are either falsified or manipulated (15 percent).

Further information on OPSON X.

Genome editing, also known as gene editing, is one of the precision breeding techniques in food that may be adopted by the government after EU Exit. Therefore DEFRA have run a public consultation on genetic technologies in food (Opens in a new window).

This research by the Food Standards Agency complements the consultation by gathering evidence specifically on consumer interests. For more information about genome editing in food, view our FSA Explains video.

Key findings  

• Consumers tended to have very low awareness and very low knowledge of GE food.
• More informed consumers were, or became, more accepting of GE food.
• Consumers tended to find GE food more acceptable than GM food. However, consumers found GM or GE applied to plants more acceptable than applications to animals, for example, due to human safety and animal welfare concerns.
• Most consumers felt it would be appropriate to regulate GE foods separately from GM foods. At the same time, many felt regulation should be just as thorough as for GM.
• Most consumers felt labelling should always inform the consumer of the presence of GE ingredients using the full term ‘genome edited’.  
• Overall, consumers wanted thorough regulation and transparent labelling if GE foods reach the UK market, and they suggested social media information campaigns and TV documentaries would help educate the public on GE food. 

Download report and appendices.

Download here

The Government Chemist Annual Review provides a summary of the work undertaken by the Government Chemist team, including highlights from the referee cases, advisory work and capability building activities. The review also details the impact of the work obtained though active engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. The main topics described in this review are:

• Referee cases: analysis of food for genetically modified organisms, antibiotics in honey and food labelling

• Advisory role: overview of the activities associated with the advisory role, including responding to enquiries from stakeholders and consultations and horizon scanning on the area of honey authenticity to further facilitate the provision of advice to UK Government on this topic

• Capability building: the review highlights particular projects the Government Chemist team worked on to be ready for future challenges. In this review, the ongoing work related to food allergy topics, and CBD and controlled cannabinoids is described

• Knowledge sharing activities to further the impact of the referee and advisory functions: the review highlights some of the knowledge sharing activities undertaken by the team to ensure that the breadth of knowledge generated through the Government Chemist’s programme reaches its target audiences.

Purpose of assessment
This assessment is intended to support the FSA in understanding changes in the food system related to the COVID-19 pandemic, as they relate to the FSA mission. It is limited in scope to understanding the implications for the work of the FSA and so does not consider the wider societal impacts. It builds on key findings from existing research and analysis undertaken throughout the period of the pandemic.

Key Judgements
1. Behaviour changes brought about by COVID-19 restrictions and health practices are likely to have led to a temporary drop in the incidence of some food borne diseases (para 1).
2. The adoption of an increasing range of online platforms by consumers and food businesses during the pandemic will almost certainly remain and present challenges to food regulation and its enforcement (paras 2-4).
3. It is highly likely that people’s lives when it comes to food have become increasingly varied and will continue to present a more diverse risk environment for the FSA to deal with after the pandemic. This is particularly driven by the longterm trend towards increasing food insecurity (exacerbated by COVID-19) and the underlying economic divergence (paras 5-12).
4. There is almost certainly an increased appetite for government intervention to ensure food safety and availability. This is not universal, but experiences during the pandemic are likely to have shifted public attitudes, presenting an opportunity for interventions (paras 13-14).
5. Although there is likely to be increased vulnerability to food crime in some consumer groups due to COVID-19 related changes, there is very little evidence of this being exploited (paras 15-17).
6. The response to the pandemic forced a reconfiguration of FSA activities, leading to changes in working practices, and a renewed focus on intelligence and risk led activities (paras 18-21).

Read full board paper.

 This independent report, published on 15 July 2021, looks at the entire food chain, from field to fork. This includes production, marketing, processing, sale and purchase of food (for consumption in the home and out of it). It also looks at the consumer practices, resources and institutions involved in these processes. Part one of this independent report was published in July 2020.

The review was led by Henry Dimbleby supported by an advisory panel and Defra officials. Henry Dimbleby is co-founder of Leon restaurants, the lead non-executive director at Defra and co-author of The School Food Plan.

The strategic objectives of the plan are to:

1. Escape the junk food cycle to protect the NHS.
2. Reduce diet-related inequality.
3. Make the best use of our land.
4. Create a long-term shift in our food culture.

Fourteen recommendations have been put together, which are intended to create the kind of food system the people of this country say they want – and need:

• Recommendation 1. Introduce a sugar and salt reformulation tax. Use some of the revenue to help get fresh fruit and vegetables to low income
  families
• Recommendation 2. Introduce mandatory reporting for large food companies
• Recommendation 3. Launch a new “Eat and Learn” initiative for schools
• Recommendation 4. Extend eligibility for free school meals
• Recommendation 5. Fund the Holiday Activities and Food programme for the next three years
• Recommendation 6. Expand the Healthy Start scheme
• Recommendation 7. Trial a “Community Eatwell” programme, supporting those on low incomes to improve their diets
• Recommendation 8. Guarantee the budget for agricultural payments until at least 2029 to help farmers transition to more sustainable land use
• Recommendation 9. Create a Rural Land Use Framework based on the Three Compartment Model 
• Recommendation 10. Define minimum standards for trade, and a mechanism for protecting them
• Recommendation 11. Invest £1 billion in innovation to create a better food system
• Recommendation 12. Create a National Food System Data programme
• Recommendation 13. Strengthen government procurement rules to ensure that taxpayer money is spent on healthy and sustainable food
• Recommendation 14. Set clear targets and bring in legislation for long-term change.

Next steps

Over the next six months, the Government will develop a Food Strategy White Paper informed by this independent review, the wider stakeholder community and other evidence. 

The Food and Drink Sector Council (FDSC) – a formal industry partnership with government – will publish its own vision for the future of the supply chain in September. This will focus upon key areas where the food chain can make a difference.

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:

The Food Authenticity Network (FAN) is pleased to announce support from the Food Industry Intelligence Network (FIIN), an industry-led consortium which enables a collaborative and targeted approach to supply chain assurance.

Both FAN and FIIN were established in 2015 in response to the recommendations of the ‘Elliott Review’ to respectively, bring together global information on food authenticity testing and to create a ‘safe haven’ for industry members to collect, collate, analyse and disseminate information and intelligence to protect the interests of the consumer.

Helen Sisson, Industry Co-Chair of FIIN said, ‘’On behalf of the FIIN membership we are delighted to commit support for the Food Authenticity Network. One of the FIIN founding objectives is to ‘Help ensure the integrity of food supply chains and protect the interests of the consumer’. In order to support delivery of this objective effective authenticity testing, harnessing advances in analytical testing methodologies and identifying competence and capability in the testing arena is pivotal to FIIN succeeding in its goals. The Food Authenticity Network enhances FIIN with these additional capabilities and therefore our support is a natural extension of the FIIN evolution.’’

Selvarani Elahi MBE, UK Deputy Government Chemist and Executive Director, Food Authenticity Network, said: “I am very happy that FIIN has committed to supporting us as FAN and FIIN share many values and both seek to help secure global food supply chains. FIIN and its 48 food industry Members bring a wealth of invaluable global food industry experience to the Food Authenticity Network, and I definitely think we will be stronger by working together.”

Professor Chris Elliott OBE, Queen’s University Belfast and author of the ‘Elliott Report’¹ said: “I am delighted to see how two concepts that were crafted in the Elliott Review have flourished and become such successes. Both FIIN and FAN are unique initiatives with nothing quite like them elsewhere in the world. The challenges of combating food fraud are set to remain and potentially worsen. This collaboration strengthens our position to be able to better combat food fraud collectively and I am very excited to see what FIIN and FAN can achieve together.”

A new report has been published based on data collected by the NVWA (The Netherlands Food and Consumer Safety Authority) that shows that certified organisations perform better than non-certified in relation to compliance with regulations. It covers a 5 year period and 15,000 audits.The paper concludes that businesses operating to 3^rd party management systems perform better than non-certificated sites. Businesses with BRCGS certification in place performed well and reported fewer non-compliances with the regulation than both non-certified organisations, as well as those operating on other certification programmes.

You can read the article and dowload the full paper here

Herbs and spices are vulnerable to adulteration, and the problem has only been compounded by the Covid pandemic. However, NGS is giving food manufacturers, retailers, and regulators, the tools they need to help combat on food fraud. Rather than returning a simple positive/ negative result, NGS reliably detects and reports multi-species DNA in even the most complex of samples, including herbs and spices, which allows food analyst laboratories to screen for thousands of species in one test, and get same-day results.

Read the article here

Horizon Europe Cluster 6 Work Programme 2021-2022 on Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment includes two proposed calls related to food authenticty:

• HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-01-04: Innovative solutions to prevent adulteration of food bearing quality labels: focus on organic food and geographical indications p199
• HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-01-11: Effective systems for authenticity and traceability in the food system p217

Further information can be found at: wp-9-food-bioeconomy-natural-resources-agriculture-and-environment_horizon-2021-2022_en.pdf (europa.eu)

The commission are also hosting a number of information days that run until 16 July for those who might be interested in preparing a proposal. Homepage | Horizon Europe Info Days 2021 (horizon-europe-infodays2021.eu)

This site also contains a document library under each topic with useful information.

For UK specific information visit: https://www.gov.uk/business-finance-support/horizon-2020-business-grants-uk

Moisture content of roasted coffee beans is a major issue for the coffee industry and the consumer.  A gravimetric method is the standard method for moisture content, but is time consuming. Italian researchers have compared the use of NIR (near infrared) spectroscopy to that of a thermogravimetric moisture analyser (TMA) to enable real-time monitoring of the coffee bean moisture content. The NIR spectra of roasted beans and ground coffee were analysed chemometrically and compared to TMA results. It was found that the NIR results gave good or better accuracy than the TMA results, and hence it was concluded that the NIR method would be a good standard method for coffee moisture content evaluation.

Read the abstract here

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published its June 2021 Food Fraud Monthly Summary reporting food fraud incidents and investigations from around the world. These have been kindly represented as an infographic above by our Member Bruno Séchet and thanks for allowing us to share it with the rest of the Network.

In addition, there are also references to two interesting articles in the Summary. One reports a recent News blog on our website by the Arral Food Institute on food fraud in Canada. The other is an artlce by the Chair of the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

You can dowload the June 2021 Food Fraud Summary here

Droplet digital polymerase chain reation (ddPCR) technology is a PCR method utilising a water-oil emulsion droplet system, where each nanoliter-sized droplet in the emulsion contains the template DNA molecules, essentially serving the same function as individual test tubes or wells in a plate in which the PCR reaction takes place. In this study, ddPCR was used to detect adulteration of acacia honey with canola (rapeseed) honey. DNA extraction from pollen in acacia honey and canola honey was performed using four different pollen treatment methods. A duplex ddPCR method was developed based on the specific target gene in acacia and canola, which permitted detecting up to 1% adulteration of canola in acacia. This method is more rapid and accurate than the accepted microscopy examination of honey pollen, but does not address exogenous sugar adulteration of honey.

Read the abstract here

The US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) requests technology providers, and other stakeholders from around the world to develop traceability hardware or software or analytics platforms, that are low cost or no cost to the end user. This is in response to last year's FDA proposed a new rule, that will lay the foundation for 'farm-to-table' traceability across the US food industry. The FDA will accept submissions of such systems from June 1 to July 30, and is hoping to announce up to 12 winners at the end of the challenge period. No cash prizes will be awarded, but the winners will have the opportunity to present their work publicly in a webinar planned for September. 

Read the article here, and the FDA Challenge here

Spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) collects the Raman scattered signal at some distance from the excitation laser spot on the sample. In this way, the Raman spectra are recovered from the sample's sub-surface through the packaging, providing a characteristic fingerprint of the product which can be further analysed chemometrically. This is a relatively new technique, and this review examines all the studies reported to date, where SORS is applied to analyse different foods and beverages, permitting rapid, non-invasive analysis to ensure quality control and authentication of raw materials and end products.

Read the abstract here

This article examines the economic effect of the Covid pandemic, and in particular how it has impacted on the global food security especially in lower-income countries around the world. The World Food Programme estimated in April this year, that 296 million people are undernourished in the 35 countries it works in, which is a 60% increase from the previous year. Not only has the pandemic affected incomes and food supply in lower income countries such as Bangladesh, but also low income families in developed countries.such as the USA because of rising food prices. The World Bank has stated that although there has not generally been food shortages during the pandemic, next seasons's crops could be affected by supply disruptions and inflation affecting key agricultural inputs such as fertilisers and seeds, or prolonged labour shortages.

Read the full article here

Polyphenols are a diverse group of natural compounds contributing to the organoleptic properties of wine. Their distribution and content in wines is dependent on grape variety, where the grapes are grown, oenological practices, and storage conditions and time. Hence they are good markers for wine authenticity. This review examines the analytical methods to determine polyphenols especially the metabolomic studies using NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) or MS (mass spectrometry) combined with chemometrics, and previous studies utilising polyphenols for wine authenticity.

Read the full open-access paper.

Saffron is the most expensive spice on the international market, and as such is considered the most vulnerable to adulteration and fraud. The most common adulterants such as safflower, marigold and tumeric cannot be detected in the ISO specified certification system examining the aroma, flavour and colour of saffron even at the 20% w/w level. This study aimed to develop a rapid, untargeted and sensitive method to authenticate saffron based on direct analysis in real time (DART) using an ambient ionisation source with an Orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometer (HRMS) to detect adulteration by safflower and/or tumeric. Chemometric analysis permitted discrimination of the metabolic profile under optimised DART-HRMS conditions permitting discrimination of these adulterants down to the 5% level.

Read the full open-access research paper

Between September and December 2020, Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC) inspectors took 45 samples of fresh and frozen tuna from retailers and frozen tuna from wholesalers, and carried out 92 types of analysis.The objective of the operation was to detect the use and frequency of chemical treatments that are used to hide the spoilage of the fish going brown, and passing it off as a fresher item, which retains its red colour. The FASFC analysed for the treatment with colourants, ascorbic acid, nitrite and nitrates, and carbon monoxide. 

More than 35 tons of tuna was seized having been treated with carbon monoxide. Almost half of the 25 samples tested had been treated with nitrite or nitrate. Sixteen of 29 samples tested were non-compliant for amounts of ascorbic acid, which has a limit of 300 mg/kg under EU Regulations.

As a result of the fraud discovered in 2020, the AFSCA will include testing for carbon monoxide treatment in routine checks as part of its control plan in 2021 and will increase inspections on imports of tuna from non-EU countries.

Read the article here

This study provides a preliminary quantitative and qualitative analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on European agriculture and the agri-food supply chain in light of the responses deployed by the European Union and its Member States to mitigate its effects.

KEY FINDINGS
• Overall, during the pandemic, the EU agri-food supply chain has demonstrated a high degree of resilience. The
value of the output of the agricultural industry declined by 1.4% in 2020 compared to 2019, although, when
compared to the 2015-2019 average, it grew by 2.9%. Nonetheless, sectors highly dependent on the food service
(e.g. wine, beef and veal) have faced major difficulties. Flowers and plants and sugar have also suffered
considerable financial losses.
• The EU response was highly effective in preserving the integrity of the Single market. Conversely, measures
adopted under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) had mixed results having been implemented partially or
inconsistently across Member States (MSs).
• The costs of the crisis for the EU agri-food sector will be borne primarily by MSs. National financial support - namely
in the form of State aids (estimated EUR 63.9 billion) and other instruments – has been significantly higher than
EU support (EUR 80 million in private storage aids).
• To better respond to future crises, policy responses should be designed following a ‘food systems approach’.
Moreover, the reasons behind the limited impact of CAP measures during the pandemic should be better
investigated. Consideration should also be given to the decoupling of the CAP crisis reserve from farmers’ direct
payments to reinforce EU financial capacity during crises. Finally, because of the economic consequences of the
pandemic, food assistance programmes for the most deprived are needed.