Abstract

Maintaining the quality and safety of Australian food and fibre products for domestic and export markets is paramount. Product fraud is on the rise and has the potential to cause significant harm to Australia’s reputation for producing high-quality goods and ultimately reduce returns at the farm gate. Globally, food fraud is becoming a significant challenge, estimated to cost $40-50 billion a year, and $2-3 billion in Australia alone.

In aspiring to reach the National Farmers’ Federation’s target of $100 billion in farm gate value by 2030, Australian producers need to be able to mitigate incidents of product fraud to ensure that trust is maintained with consumers and that producers can capitalise on changing consumer and market trends.

This report, written by Deakin University, explores the range of product fraud cases – from simple substitution or incorrect labelling of a product to more sophisticated methods that result in consumers paying a premium price for a counterfeit product.

High-value products such as beef and seafood are particularly at risk of substitution, as well as the use of fillers to increase volume and mislabelling about provenance and quality. The drivers behind product fraud are commonly linked to shortages or constraint of supply in raw ingredients, and while our ability to detect fraud continues to improve, there is a need for a whole-of-supply-chain approach to combat the problem.

But while the problem is real, and on the rise, the report highlights technology solutions that exist and are ready to be deployed along the supply chain, to reduce the incidence of fraud. A plethora of solutions are needed to make an impact on global fraud. A coordinated supply chain approach is an important first step to mitigate the potential risks and protect Australia’s reputation in domestic and global markets.

Read full report.

The European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC) has published its monthly summary on articles covering food fraud and adulteration. In this November issue, there are articles on frauds involving wine, alcoholic beverages, milk and milk products, herbs and spices, cereals, meat products, seafood, cocoa, tea, fruits and vegetables, oils and honey.

Read the full summary of articles at: https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/publication/food-fraud-summary-november-2021_en

Many thanks to our Members Riccardo Siligato PhD LLM (for producing the report) and Bruno Sechet (for producing the infographic).

The European Commission published today the results of the first coordinated control plan on the authenticity of herbs and spices launched by the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety.

It has been carried out by 21 EU Member States, Switzerland and Norway, with the technical support of the Joint Research Centre, which performed nearly 10,000 analyses. The plan is the largest investigation so far into the authenticity of culinary herbs and spices in terms of participating countries and samples analysed (1885).

The main conclusions were as follows: 

• The overall rate of suspicious samples was 17% (323 of a total of 1885 analysed samples), which is less than what was previously reported in the scientific literature or by national food control institutions.
• The oregano supply chain was most vulnerable as 48% of samples were suspicious of being adulterated, in most cases with olive leaves.
• The percentage of samples which were suspicious of adulteration were 17% for pepper, 14% for cumin, 11% for curcuma, and 11% for saffron.
• The lowest suspicion rate (6%) was found for paprika/chilli.
• The majority of suspicious samples contained non-declared plant material; in 2% of the analysed spice samples non-authorised dyes were detected. One sample contained a high level of lead chromate.
• In two cumin, 45 oregano, and four pepper samples copper compounds above the relevant maximum residue limit set by Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 were found.
• No specific trend regarding the rate of potential fraudulent manipulations along the supply chain (countries of origin/importers/wholesalers/processors/packagers) could be observed. However, for certain stages (domestic production, local markets, border control, and internet) the number of samples tested was too low to enable statistically meaningful comparisons.

Read full report.

The anticipated failure of many countries to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 necessitates the assessment of science–policy engagement mechanisms for food systems transformation. 

A High Level Expert Group (EG) of the European Commission explore options for enhancing existing partnerships, mandates and resources — or reimagining a new mission — for science–policy interfaces in this paper.

The science policy interfaces (SPI) options presented in this paper provide a potential framework to promote consensus around ways to achieve independent scientific interaction with policy needs at different scales. Establishing more effective food systems SPIs will require financial and political capital and time-defined dialogues that go beyond cooperation among existing SPIs to include other actors (including national and regional governments, the private sector and NGOs). These dialogues should be shaped by openness, inclusivity, transparency, scientific independence and institutional legitimacy.

The UN Food Systems Summit held in September 2021 provided some space for this discussion, which should be furthered during the UN Climate Change Conference in the UK (COP26) and Nutrition for Growth in Tokyo. The global community must seize on this historic moment to formulate commitments that enhance SPIs and that concretely help them to support the urgently needed transformation of our food systems.

Read full paper.

The Food Authenticity Network Executive Team (Selvarani Elahi and Mark Woolfe) and the Chair of our Advisory Board, Sterling Crew have been interviewed for an episode of Bruker's Food Authenticity Podcast series.

Listen to both parts of the episode here:

• Part 1 and Part 2

 You can access other episodes in this series with the links below:

• Episode 1: Michael Roberts, Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, discussing food authenticity and consequences of food fraud on the ecosystem.

• Episode 2: Ron Phipps, president and founder of CPNA International and Vice President of Apimondia Scientific Commission on Beekeeping Economy discussing the impact of food fraud on the honey industry and steps that have been taken to combat the sale of illicit honey.

• Episode 3: Peter Awram & Lawyer Gillian Wade exploring the problem of #honey adulteration from a perspective of both a producer and a legal expert.

• Episode 4: Gordon Burns, technical director, and co-founder of ETS Laboratories. ETS Labs has been in operation for over 40 years, and currently runs specialist independent wine analysis labs based in California’s Napa Valley - one of the United States’ premium wine growing regions
• Episode 5: Professor Michael Roberts, Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at UCLA. Michael has been at the forefront of studies into food fraud for almost 20 years, having taught the first ever Food Law and Policy class at the University of Arkansas and Ron Phipps, Vice-President of the Apimondia Scientific Commission on Beekeeping Economy and President of CPNA International, Ltd.

The United States Food and Drug Administration has created a dedicated webpage on food fraud. The page gives information on:

• How to report food fraud
• Examples of food fraud
• How FDA fights food fraud
• Enforcement and legal consequences
• Guidance documents
• Import alerts
• Research publications
• Additional resources.

Visit the FDA Food Fraud webpage here.

JRC has published its monthly summary on articles covering food fraud and adulteration. In this October issue, there are articles on frauds involving wine, alcoholic beverages, milk and milk products, herbs and spices, cereals, vegetables, meat products, food supplements, seafood, sugar, olive oil, honey.

Read the full summary of articles at: October JRC Fraud Summary

Emerging regulations and industry standards are requiring risk and vulnerability assessments of Food Fraud as a prerequisite to countermeasures and decision-making systems.

These assessments and risk management systems are not familiar food safety tools. It is effective and efficient to utilize an enterprise risk management (ERM) framework, such as developed by the Committee of the Sponsoring Companies of the Treadway Commission (COSO).

ERM risk assessment occurs into two stages: (1) a qualitative initial screening followed by (2) a more detailed quantitative assessment. All types of Food Fraud can result in enterprise-wide risks so an enterprise risk management system must cover all types of vulnerabilities.

The model developed in this paper addresses the unmet need of the first stage referred to here as the Food Fraud Initial Screening (FFIS).

Access the full paper here.

Food is at the center of the world’s most urgent challenges and largest opportunities.

According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition is the leading cause of death and disease globally. In fact, there is a “triple burden” of malnutrition at all levels of the population:

• Undernutrition: The lack of food and/or access to it. 
• Overnutrition: The consumption of too many calories.  
• Poor nutrition: Not the right nutritional content (vitamin and mineral deficiencies).

Given advances in the quality and cost of mass spectrometry, bioinformatics, machine learning and big data, along with the growing recognition of the important health impacts of food, the time is ripe for the PTFI.  

The PTFI will strengthen and support ongoing work by developing low–cost mass spectrometry kits, standards, methods, cloud-based analytical tools, and a public database that will include a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 1,000 foods that are representative of geographic and cultural diversity worldwide.

The PTFI will establish a Working Group, composed of experts around the globe, who will inform the selection of the first 2,000 foods based on specific criteria. The overarching goal of this selection process is to ensure inclusivity. The following dimensions we are considering arise out of provocations that help define the plenum of global food options: 

• Biology: Where in the phylogenetic tree did the organisms that become food originate? 
• Tissue: What part of organisms are used for food? Entire organisms or portions of plants, animals, or microbes? 
• Geography: Where do foods originate and where do they thrive? 
• Consumers: Who are specific foods targeted to? 
• Processing: Broadly speaking, how are foods treated after “harvest”? 
• Domestication: How has human intervention modified organisms from their native (wild) state? 
• Derivation and Formulation: Is the organism (plant, animal, microbe) consumed as a food as is, or is it a derived ingredient in a formulated product or recipe? 
• Proportional Abundance: From rice to spice – which foods are the center of a meal and the core of a cuisine, and which are tiny fractions of the diet, but can be just as frequently consumed? 
• Affordability: Which foods are luxury and which are staples? 
• Frequency: Which foods are consumed on a regular basis and which are associated with rare festive events, life transitions, spiritual celebrations? 
• Complementarity: Which foods are historically consumed as ensembles? 

Once the database is in place, the scientific community and private sector can build on this public resource by adding analysis of additional foods, varieties, and cooking methods. The PTFI technical platform will enable conditions for a rapid acceleration in research and innovation in both the public and private sectors.

Visit the website for further information.

This is Tenet's first edition of their quarterly newsletter specifically focused on the prevention and protection against fraud and financial crime for the food sector.

In each issue, Tenet will provide articles to assist with fraud prevention planning, advice on protecting brand integrity and recomendations to improve quality control - all from a legal perspective.

 A new type of crime that goes to the heart of what we eat. Criminal syndicates are infiltrating the global food supply chain, undermining the ability of consumers to trust what is on the label and what ends up on their plate.

This episode was aired 2 weeks ago and is available until 20 October 2021: 

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/four-corners/

and then select the food fraud video

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has released a new IARC Evidence Summary Brief, titled “The Nutri-Score: A Science-Based Front-of-Pack Nutrition Label”. This report, led by scientists from IARC and partners, shows that the Nutri-Score, a clear and simple front-of-pack nutrition label that rates the nutritional quality of food products, is an effective tool to guide consumers towards healthier food choices.

Based on scientific evidence, the IARC Evidence Summary Brief stresses the superiority of the Nutri-Score to other nutrition labels, and calls for its widespread and systematic adoption in Europe and beyond, to help consumers lower their risk of noncommunicable diseases such as cancer.

Read IARC Press Release 301

Read the Evidence Summary Brief about the Nutri-Score 

Read more about the IARC Evidence Summary Briefs series 

Foreword by the Government Chemist

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a powerful tool for rapidly and cost-effectively identifying and characterising plant, animal and microbial species present in mixed food samples.

The application of NGS to food authenticity, adulteration and safety testing is a constantly evolving field with its own unique set of challenges that need to be explored. Further work needs to be conducted to better understand the performance characteristics and establish relevant performance criteria and metrics, to enable results generated in different laboratories to be compared and interpreted with equal confidence.

Following concerns raised from food industry members on the use of NGS for the quantitative determination of food ingredients, the Government Chemist engaged with Defra’s Authenticity Methodology Working Group (AMWG) [1] and its Technical Sub-Group (AMWG-TSG), resulting in the AMWG producing a view [2] on the use of NGS for food authenticity testing [3].

Download Defra’s Authenticity Methodology Working Group’s view on the use of Next Generation Sequencing for food authenticity testing

[1] An independent expert group that provides scientific and technical advice to support Defra’s food authenticity programme.

[2] The views/opinions expressed by AMWG were correct at the time of the note (November 2020).

[3] Government Chemist representatives: Selvarani Elahi, Deputy Government Chemist, is the Chair of AMWG and Dr Malcolm Burns, Head of GMO unit, Principal Scientist and Special Advisor to the Government Chemist, is a Member of AMWG; they both participated in the AMWG-TSG meeting on NGS and subsequent discussions, inputting into the AMWG view on NGS.

 2020 Annual Food Fraud report: Fight against food fraud in Europe continued despite the COVID-19 pandemic 

Today, the European Commission has published the 2020 annual report of the EU Agri-Food Fraud Network (EU FFN) and the Administrative Assistance and Cooperation system for Food Fraud (AAC-FF).

In five years, the number of cases created per year has more than doubled, going from 157 in 2016 to 349 in 2020. The increased interaction between Member States within the EU Agri-Food Fraud Network has shown that fight against food fraud in Europe is tightening up. Sharing information on suspected cross-border fraud violations has proven to be essential in better identifying, investigating and protecting EU customers against illegal practices.

The EU FFN also works with the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in joint actions targeting counterfeited foodstuff. In 2020, members of the network were also engaged in OPSON - a joint Europol/Interpol initiative targeting trafficking in fake and substandard food and beverages and operation LAKE, which focused on the trafficking of the protected European eel (Anguilla Anguilla) species.

More information on the EU FFN can be found here.

Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST) has published its Horizon Scanning Report 2021, which includes essential insights from its members, for the future of the food sector. 

Drawing on the combined expertise of our professional membership, IFST has gathered insights for the future, enabling readers to envisage how the food sector will likely be impacted in the next three years by the main factors identified in the report. 

Click here to watch a recording of Chris Gilbert-Wood's (Chair of the IFST Scientific committee) update on the Horizon Scanning Survey outputs from our Spring Conference (SC21).

This report includes graphs and charts representing data collected from our members' survey, click here for a larger view of the data. 

Download the report here.

In spring 2021, Oceana Canada tested 94 seafood samples from retailers and restaurants in four major
Canadian cities: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Halifax and found that of the samples tested, 46 per cent were mislabelled.

This is consistent with national testing conducted between 2017-2019, which showed that 47 per cent of 472 seafood samples tested were mislabelled in some way. Of these,
51 per cent of 373 samples were previously mislabelled in the same four cities tested.

Read full report.

The US National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) and the Department of Defense’s Center for Development of Security Excellence (CDSE) have published a risk mitigation guide to help organizations in the food industry understand insider risks, establish insider risk programs, and develop mitigation strategies.

The “Insider Risk Mitigation Programs: Food and Agriculture Sector Implementation Guide” was developed in collaboration with federal partners and stakeholders, including the FDA.

The guide includes links to federal resources in food and agriculture, and case studies concerning food adulteration, IP theft and active shooter incidents that were carried about by insiders.

Any organization can be exposed by an insider threat, which is a person who has authorized access and uses it to commit harm to the organization. “Those with authorized access to facilities, personnel, or information can include employees, vendors, partners, suppliers, or others,” according to NCSC. “Most insider threats exhibit risky behavior prior to committing negative workplace events. If identified early, many insider threats can be mitigated before harm to the organization occurs.”

Insider threats can target food organizations through food adulteration, food fraud, theft and workplace violence.

This guide has been added to the Food Authenticity Network's Food Fraud Mitgation section under the 'Guidance' tab.

Alcohol has emerged as the sector with the largest number of counterfeit cases in India in 2020, with experts attributing this to a lack of enforcement as well as high profits available for counterfeiters during the COVID-19 crisis.

Apart from alcohol, multiple other everyday food items in India including cumin seeds, mustard oil and ghee were mentioned as major sectors affected by counterfeiting activity.

Read full article.

In the last decades, the demand for molecular tools for authenticating and tracing agri-food products has significantly increased. Food safety and quality have gained an increased interest for consumers, producers, and retailers, therefore, the availability of analytical methods for the determination of food authenticity and the detection of major adulterations takes on a fundamental role.

Among the different molecular approaches, some techniques such as the molecular markers-based methods are well established, while some innovative approaches such as isothermal amplificationbased methods and DNA metabarcoding have only recently found application in the agri-food sector.

In this review, we provide an overview of the most widely used molecular techniques for fresh and processed agri-food authentication and traceability, showing their recent advances and applications and discussing their main advantages and limitations. The application of these techniques to agrifood traceability and authentication can contribute a great deal to the reassurance of consumers in terms of transparency and food safety and may allow producers and retailers to adequately promote their products.

Read full review.