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Oceana, a nonprofit seafood conservation group, did a study back in 2015 and found that 43 percent of the salmon they tested was actually mislabeled.
Most of that salmon fraud ― we’re talking 69 percent of it ― mislabeled farmed salmon as being wild-caught salmon, which is typically more revered. That means you could be paying for a wild-caught Pacific salmon filet, when in fact you’re getting Atlantic farmed salmon.
Other fraud in the salmon market occurs when “one type of wild salmon is substituted for another, like the cheaper chum salmon or pink salmon being sold as a more expensive salmon like coho or sockeye,” Kimberly Warner, chief scientist at Oceana, told HuffPost.
Most of the fraud happens at restaurants.
Oceana found that most of the fraud from their study occurred at restaurants (67 percent vs. 20 percent at big chain retailers). Smaller grocery markets were also often guilty of salmon fraud. Big chain retailers are your safest bet for getting the salmon you actually want. But it isn’t always restaurants or markets pulling a fast one on consumers.
Sometimes the restaurants and retailers are the victims.
“What we’re dealing with is two different types of fraud,” Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute told HuffPost. “One is species substitution, where the retailer or restaurant is the victim. They’re being defrauded because the person selling them the salmon tells them it’s one thing when it’s not. The other side of it is menu mislabeling or just mislabeling in a retail establishment, and that’s when they say it’s wild-caught salmon but they know it’s farmed salmon. So there’s two distinctly different things, but they’re both fraud.”
A new discussion has been posted on the 2017 Code of Practice on Basmati Rice asking for views on the need for updated methods of analysis.
Please visit our discussion forum and have your say.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO) has published a Food and Agribusiness Roadmap to which identifies key growth areas for Australia's food exports.
The document was produced in collaboration with FIAL and names climate change, geopolitical instability and technological advances among the primary challenges facing Australian agribusinesses in the coming decades and warns that previous successes cannot be sustained through productivity improvements alone.
Five key growth enablers arose from industry consultation, each requiring a unique mix of science and technology investment, business action and ecosystem assistance:
1) Traceability and provenance
2 ) Food safety and biosecurity
3) Market intelligence and access
4) Collaboration and knowledge sharing
5) Skills.
The report states that food fraud is estimated to cost around 40 billion U.S. dollars per year worldwide, with the United States (29.8%), China (13.6%) and India (12.6%) being the largest sources of fraudulent production. However, the report also highlights breakthroughs in tracking RFID chips, barcodes and QR codes in food labels and predicts that these will help address some of industry's concerns in traceability and provenance.
The Food Authenticity Network Newsletter - Issue 6 has just been distributed to our members. It can also be accessed here:
Food Authenticity Network Newsletter - Issue 6
This is a special edition of our Newsletter as it marks the second anniversary of the Food Authenticity Network. So we thought it would be useful to inform our members about what has been achieved in the past two years and what is available on the website.
As well as this recap, in this Newsletter, there is an article on the use of peptide analysis to determine meat species from the new Quadram Institute (formerly IFR, Norwich), which is one of our Centres of Expertise. There is news about two initiatives in CEN, one looking at definitions and terms for food authenticity and fraud, and a coordinating group to look at food authenticity methods in CEN Technical Committees. The work of SGF global standards of running a voluntary control system for the fruit juice industry is also described.
We hope you will enjoy reading the Newsletter and we look forward to receiving any comments you may have on it at Secretary@foodauthenticity.uk
Kind regards
Selvarani
A suspected fake vodka factory has been raided in Aintree by HMRC, with almost 2,000 litres of potentially toxic alcohol seized.
People drinking counterfeit alcohol are "risking their lives and denying tax payers millions of pounds in unpaid duty that should be spent on vital public services".
Read the full story at:
http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Regulation/Fraud-officers-raid-suspected-fake-vodka-factory
Cyber Crime Police Units in India are to use a procedure of mapping the geographical locations of crime spots identified during the crackdown on food adulteration so as to help the police keep a tab on them.
This is not a new procedure since this method is used to geotag other incidents such as accident hot-spots but it is being used in adulteration cases for the first time in India.
Data on manufacturing units sealed or against whom action was initiated on charges of adulteration will be compiled with photographs and location and shared with all Surveillance Officers together with information on the geotagged adulteration units.
The potential adulteration of kid or lamb rennet with calf rennet is of interest for some PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) cheeses producers and those looking for a specific cheese authenticity. The researchers developed an immunoassay (indirect ELISA), and used a monoclonal antibody (mAb) raised against bovine pepsin. This mAb was found to be specific neither cross-reacting with the pepsin of other animal species (kid, lamb, pig) nor with other milk-clotting enzymes (chymosin and microbial enzymes). Using prepared test samples of kid and lamb rennets spiked with a wide range of calf rennet (from 0 to 100% v/v), the presence of bovine pepsin was detected at low levels down to 6 mg/L in kid and lamb rennets, with a good linear relationship in the range 1.25–120 mg/L.
Read the abstract at: ELISA for bovine rennet adulteration
This is a podcast where you can listen to Food Safety Magazine's editorial director speaking with Dr. John Spink on food fraud, what it is, how it's being addressed and the importance of preventing it before it occurs.
Hear the podcast at: Food fraud podcast with John Spink
IBM is working towards the 2017 beta launch (the next stage after internal development) of a food-provenance service based on blockchain technology. An outline of its planned offering, which has yet to be formally launched, has emerged recently as a result of presentations by company executives at supply chain industry events. Dubbed simply "Food Safety Solution," the service, which should be available in beta at the end of this year, is targeting a wide range of entities that make up the food supply chain ecosystem, including growers, food processors and distributors, as well as logistics providers and retailers.
Read the full article at: IBM block chain technology nearly ready
Three US NGOs have filed a lawsuit against Sanderson Farms, which is the third largest chicken producer in the USA for falsely describing its chicken as "100% natural". Traces of antibiotics, steroids, growth hormones banned in chicken production and even ketamine, a powerful anaesthetic with anti-depressive and hallucinogenic properties, were found on multiple occasions during inspections of the company's processing plants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Determining whether a product can be labelled 100% natural is approved by the USDA, which grants that label to a product if it contains "no artificial ingredient or added colour and is only minimally processed"—meaning that the product was processed in a way that does not "fundamentally alter the product." Advertising and marketing, however, does not require pre-market USDA approval, but the company has not only played up the notion that its chickens are "free of antibiotics before they leave the farm" in its television commercials, but has also mocked other companies, which advertise their poultry as lacking added hormones or steroids on the grounds that it's "illegal" to give such products to chickens.
Read the full article at: 100% natural chicken challenged in the US
At any one time the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) will be pursuing around 70 legal actions globally to prevent the sale of products being “passed off” as Scotch whisky when they are not. The industry has worked together to develop mobile authentication technology, which can be deployed locally, and is used widely across the industry to provide fast and effective identification of individuals brands. The device uses a patented technique - modulated Raman spectroscopy, which allows identification of whisky non-invasively from the outside of the bottle.
Read the full article at: Hand held device for whisky authentication
Food fraud costs the global food industry an estimated US $60 billion annually, while wine fraud probably lies in the region of US $15-20 billion (mainly centred around the fine wine market). This Australian article is interested in fake Penfold fine wines, but it is fine wines from the French and other European vineyards that get the most attention from counterfeiters. At the top of the list are Domaine de la Romanée Conti and Chateau Petrus which fetch stellar prices at wine auctions, closely followed by the Bordeaux first growths of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Chateau Latour.
Read the full article at: Fine wine fraud
Spanish researches combined two DNA methods which allowed almost 100% assignment of the genus Merluccius spp. (hake). A combination of two RFLP methods - Hake-ITS1-RFLP (89%) and Hake-Cytochrome b–RFLP (83%) permitted a 97% assigment rate. When applied to the Spanish market, it was found that 31% mislabelling of hake-based products was observed in northern Iberia markets, and a 15% mislabelling by the wrong hake species affected 60% of deep frozen products. A 16% mislabelling by other fish species substitution affected 40% of cooked products.
Read the abstract at: Mislabelling of hake species in Spanish markets
Allied Market Research have published a new report that estimates that the global market in food authenticity testing was valued at $4,978 million in 2016, and is estimated to reach $8,300 million by 2023, registering an annual growth of 7.7% from 2017 to 2023. PCR methodology accounted for more than one-third share of the total market.
Read the article at: Review of food authenticity market
Read an abstract of the report at: Food Authenticity Market Report
Chinese researchers measured the free amino acid content in five unifloral honeys (Chinese chastetree, acacia, rape, lungan and jujube) from different locations in China using reverse-phase HPLC. Multivariate statistical analyses of the 16 amino acids employing CA (cluster analysis), PCA (principal component analysis), and DA (discriminant analysis) showed that samples could be classified correctly according to their botanical origin. Additionally, DA offered a more precise mode to determine the botanical origin of Chinese honey.
Read the full paper at: Amino acids in Chinese honey
EUIPO 2017 is a situation report that establishes that organised criminal groups are involved in IPR crime. It also finds that EU-based criminal gangs involved in distributing counterfeit goods rely predominantly on manufacturers based abroad, but then organise importation, transportation, storage and distribution of the counterfeit goods within the EU. The majority of counterfeit goods come from China: the development of the Silk Road and the corresponding increasing use of rail and maritime transport between China and the EU support also new threats in the IPR crime landscape.
The report also looks at the falsification of certification schemes such as organic, and the value of falsely labelled geographical indication products e.g. PDOs. Most commonly affected products are wine, spirits, cheese, meat, fruit, vegetables and cereals.
Read more details at: Headlines on Europol report on counterfeiting
Read the report at: EUIPO 2017 on counterfeiting
BSI Supply Chain and Services has issued two modules on food safety and fraud: SCREEN - Supply Chain Risk and Exposure Evaluation Network, which allow users to monitor the threat of food contamination, adulteration, mislabelling and recalls by providing threat ratings in more than 200 countries.
Read the full article at: BSI's SCREEN modules
