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European standardisation in the field of food and feed contributes to improving levels of food safety and protecting the health of consumers. CEN (European Committee for Standardization) provides validated test methods that are used by the food industry and by the competent public authorities for official control purposes and by food- and feed-producing companies for internal checks. 

Food authenticity was identified as a new area of interest and a Technical Committee was established to standardise methods in this area. At its first meeting in 2019, this committee established a series of working groups (WG) within which methods would be standardised:

WG1:   Concepts, terms and definitions

WG2:   Species analyses using DNA-based methods

WG3:   Coffee and coffee products

WG4:   NMR analysis

WG5:   Stable Isotope Analysis

WG6:   Validation concepts of non-targeted methods

It has just been announced that the UK has been voted to lead on Working Group 1 (concepts, terms and definitions):

Dr James Donarski from Fera Science Ltd will be the Convener and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will provide the Secretariat function.

The development of a common language for concepts, terms and definitions associated with food authenticity is important to securing the integrity of food and mitigating food fraud, facilitating international trade.

Food adulteration is a growing concern worldwide. The collation and analysis of food adulteration cases is of immense significance for food safety regulation and research.

Research led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences collected 961 cases of food adulteration between 1998 and 2019 from the literature reports and announcements released by the Chinese government. Critical molecules were manually annotated in food adulteration substances as determined by food chemists, to build the first food adulteration database in China (http://www.rxnfinder.org/FADB-China/). This database is also the first molecular-level food adulteration database worldwide.

Additionally, the researchers propose an in silico method for predicting potentially illegal food additives on the basis of molecular fingerprints and similarity algorithms. Using this algorithm, we predict 1,919 chemicals that may be illegally added to food; these predictions can effectively assist in the discovery and prevention of emerging food adulteration.

The publication of this research has been published in Food Chemistry, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.127010   

The FADB-CHINA database has been added to the 'Services' page of the Food Fraud Mitigation section.

Research undertaken by Crowe UK,  KYND and University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Counter Fraud Studies found that the vast majority of the top 200 AIM businesses have significant unaddressed cyber risks. Unfortunately, the risks identified are not just limited to the top 200 AIM businesses and are also likely to exist in similar companies. 

The cyber landscape is becoming increasingly complex, particularly now we're seeing increased strain from fraud and cybercrime pressures related to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Fraud and cybercrime is expected to surge over 60% in the coming months. Keeping pace with the evolution of cyber threats is becoming ever more challenging and important. This was evidenced in the report's key findings.

• 91.5% exposed to email spoofing
• 47.5% have at least one external internet service exposed, placing them at higher risk of ransomware attack
• 85% using services with well-known vulnerability to cyber attack
• 41.5% using vulnerable out of date software
• 31.5% operating with at least one expired, revoked, or distrusted security certificate
• 64% companies with at least on domain registered to personal email address.

Download the Fraud and cybercrime vulnerabilities on AIM report

The restrictions which many countries have brought into place to manage the spread of Covid-19 have in turn severely impacted the Food industry Buying patterns have changed resulting in panic buying testing the ability of some food chains to respond whilst on the other hand closures of food service outlets and non-food retail has resulted in loss of markets for others.

Much of the focus in factories has rightly been on changing the way that we work to safeguard the health of our workers by providing a safe working environment introducing social distancing. The changes which we have all had to make also introduce new challenges to the way that we manage food safety with potential disruption to supply chains, staff absenteeism and an influx of new temporary workers to the food industry.

This guidance document has been produced to complement the BRCGS Food Safety Standard to help managers fine tune their food safety management systems to cope with the new position which the food industry now faces.

BRCGS Guidance Document – Managing Food Safety During Covid-19.

In this article, Karen Everstine discusses the potential effects of the Covid-19 epidemic on food supply chain and the risk of increased food fraud. The epidemic has resulted in a weakening of regulatory oversight and food safety/authenticity auditing, and has already had an efect on some of the global supply chains.  

Read the full article

IGFS, Queens University Belfast working with ABP have analysed 413 fraud reports in the beef supply chain between 1997 and 2017 .published in the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) and HorizonScan to determine their overall pattern.  Counterfeiting was the most common type of fraud in the beef industry; it accounted for 42.9% of all reports documented. When reports were classified by area in the supply chain in the report occurred, 36.4% of all cases were attributed to primary processing, of which 95.5% were counterfeiting cases. Counterfeiting included products manufactured/packed on unapproved premises, or without appropriate inspection or documentation, as well as products issued with fraudulent health certificates.

Read the abstract

GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) has just unveiled Version 2020 of its Benchmarking Requirements under its new Director Erica Sheward. As well as assessing food safety culture when companies are certified, Version 2020 puts more emphasis on food fraud and its mitigation to ensure compliance with both EU and US food law.

Read the article

•  Step 1: Check that the certificate has been issued by a certification body that is accredited by an internationally                                      recognised accreditation body. 
• Step 2: Check the claims by the certification body that they hold the appropriate accreditation from the accreditation body. 
• Step 3: Validation of certificate.

IFST has brought together a COVID-19 Advisory Group, which includes our scientific staff and some of our experienced members. The COVID-19 Advisory Group are actively assessing the impact of COVID-19 - signposting to credible resources created by others, and generating additional complimentary IFST knowledge resources for consumers, members and organisations throughout the food chain. These are uploaded onto the IFST COVID-19 Knowledge Hub which is free to access.

The COVID-19 Advisory Group are working closely with our IFST member communities, other professional bodies and external Government to equip everyone with best advice at this time.

Meet the COVID-19 Advisory Group https://www.ifst.org/covid-19-advisory-group:

Chair: Chris Gilbert-Wood (also Chair of IFST Scientific Committee)

Members: Ivan Bartolo, Sue Bell, Julian Cooper, Sterling Crew, Sam Jennings, Alex Kent, Andy Kerridge, Peter              Littleton, Louise Manning, John Points, Denis Treacy, Peter Wareing.                            

And from the IFST Team: Natasha Medhurst and Rachel Ward.

Access the COVID-19 Knowledge Hub here: https://www.ifst.org/covid-19-knowledge-hub

The outbreak of the Coronavirus has offered an opportunity for fast cash as criminals exploit shortages of genuine products and the anxieties of the public. Europol has just published a report highlighting examples of counterfeit or sub-standard products sold during the corona crisis, which pose a real threat to public health and safety. People who buy these fake products have a false sense of security, while they are in fact left unprotected against the virus. Europol is currently supporting several operations across the EU to combat the distribution of counterfeit and sub-standard goods during the COVID-19 pandemic. This involves the intensified monitoring of online platforms in order to possibly tackle online Coronavirus-related crimes. Co-operation with private industry stakeholders is also a crucial aspect in the work Europol is transacting in an attempt to counteract the threat in this area. Whereas the report focuses on problems in the health sector, it could also have implications for the Agri-food sector as well. 

Read the article here or the Europol report

Milk adulteration normally involves dilution with water or whey and adding other nitrogen sources such as ammonium salts, urea, melamine or non-dairy proteins. The established method for detecting added water in milk is to determine its freezing point depression, however, this method would not be effective to detect most milk adulterations. Brazilian researchers have developed a rapid and simple method to screen milk for adulteration, which involves precipitation of the milk proteins with copper sulphate and measuring the intensity of remaining copper salt after complexing with EDTA with a smartphone  and a colorimetric app. The method was tested by adulterating milk with ammonium chloride, urea and melamine, and was able to detect the addition of 1% added water to the milk.

Read the abstract here

This study evaulated the feasibility of using non-targeted UHPLC-HRMS (ultra high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to a high resolution mass spectrometer) fingerprints as chemical descriptors to address the classification and authentication of paprika samples. Fingerprinting data based on signal intensities as a function of m/z values and retention times were registered in negative ion mode using a q-Orbitrap high-resolution mass analyser, which targeted mainly the polyphenols and phenolic acids in the paprika. The fingerprints were subjected to unsupervised principal component analysis (PCA) and supervised partial least squares regression-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) to study sample discrimination and classification.  A total of 105 paprika samples produced in three different regions, La Vera PDO and Murcia PDO in Spain, and the Czech Republic, were analysed. Non-targeted UHPLC-HRMS fingerprints were able to authenticate paprika production regions with 100% sample classification rates by PLS-DA. In addition, the obtained fingerprints were also able to discriminate between the different paprika taste varieties in all the studied cases, even in the case of La Vera PDO, which has sweet, bittersweet, and spicy tasting paprika, which are produced in a very small region.

Read the full paper

DNA  methods are available for determining the adulteration of orange juice by mandarin juice. Chinese researchers have developed a different approach by analysing the VOCs in the headspace of orange juice (not from concentrate) and manadarin juice, and using chemometrics to calculate if a sample of orange juice has mandarin juice in it. Juices were extracted from different cultivars of sweet orange and mandarin fruits. After being pasteurised, the VOCs in the juice samples were extracted using headspace solid-phase microextraction, and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Thirty-two VOCs identified in both the sweet orange juice and mandarin juice, but at different concentrations, were used as variables, and the identification model for discriminating between the two varieties of juice was established by principal component analysis. Model juice mixtures were made up from different varieties of both mandarins and oranges. The model was able  to identify and quantify a blend of mandarin juice in orange juice at the level of 10% or above.

Read the full paper

Brazil’s Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Live­stock and Food Supply (MAPA) conducted an investigation over the past two years into the olive oil market, which revealed wide­spread mis­la­bell­ing in a country where olive oil con­sump­tion has risen sharply in recent years. MAPA ana­lysed 322,329 litres of olive oil sam­ples col­lected from 12 Brazil­ian states, and found 207,579 litres (64 per­cent) to be sub­stan­dard. The inspection team investigated 279 samples from 214 batches, and 38,7% of the batches were problematic most of which related to poor quality olive oil being sold as good quality. The high­est inci­dences of olive oil fraud occurred in those states with large num­bers of  bottling com­pa­nies, and fraud was rife among bot­tlers who import olive oil in bulk, mainly from Argentina.

Read the article here

This review maps the current state of research in the area of the geographical origin of agricultural products and food. The review is divided in three parts. The first part deals with the analytical techniques applied in the food authentication, with special mention of the use of elemental analysis and multiple isotope ratios. The second section focuses on published research data for geographical origin authentication for the period 2015–2019. The third part contains the results on certification of geographical origin on specific agricultural products.drawn from the published articles in the period 2015–2019. 

Read the full paper

Raman spectroscopy represents an increasingingly useful technique for food authentication being a fast, reliable non-targeted method, requiring a minimum sample preparation step. However, in the case of honey, there are limitations to its application caused by sugar crystallisation effects and fluorescence in dark coloured honeys. Romanian researchers have developed a simple sample preparation of honey by a 1:1 w/v dilution in distilled water, which overcomes the limitations and gives reliable and reproductible spectra. 

Read the abstract here