News

In this study (open access), a UHPLC-QToF-MS method was used to quantify 15 desulfoglucosinolates (GSLs) in Brassica vegetables and pungent species.  The authors modelled a GSL profile for each species.  They report that authenticated plants displayed distinct group–specific profiles. Kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts contained higher levels of indole GSLs (glucobrassicin, neo-glucobrassicin) along with glucoraphanin and glucoiberin, whereas turnip, horseradish, wasabi, and watercress were characterised by elevated sinigrin, gluconasturtiin, and total aromatic GSLs

They then used the same method to test 69 dietary supplements, purporting to be brassica-based sources of GSLs, which were purchased on the US retail market.. They do not discuss how LC-MS matrix effects might impact the transferability of the model from fresh vegetables to supplements.  Irrespective of this, they report that nominally-similar commercial supplements exhibited substantial compositional variability, with some differing by many orders of magnitude in their GSL content and patterns.

They conclude that this study has revealed group-associated patterns in authenticated materials and highlighted the compositional heterogeneity of commercial products. Many current supplements do not reliably reflect authentic GSL profiles, underscoring challenges for product standardisation, authenticity evaluation, and dietary intake assessment.

Photo by Anna Evans on Unsplash

The adulteration of ground cinnamon (particularly the substitution or dilution of “true” cinnamon with cheaper species such as cassia bark) has been high on many vulnerability risk registers for the past few years.  This has driven the development of classification models (“chemometrics”) built from Machine Learning trained on spectral signatures from reference samples of pure and adulterated cinnamons.  Most of these models are built on Infra Red (IR) or Near Infra Red (NIR) scanners.

This study (purchase required, $USD 31.50) reports the development of a classification model using UV-visible spectrometry.  Whilst generating more signal noise than IR or NIR, UV-vis is cheaper and does not require the same control of environmental temperature and humidity to avoid spectral fluctuations and baseline drift.

The model was trained on two predominant species: C. verum (n = 51) and C. cassia (n = 64). All C. verum samples were harvested from Sri Lanka, whereas C. cassia samples were collected from Guangdong Province (n = 34) and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region ( n = 30) of China.

The authors report that their PLS-DA species discriminant model correctly classified all the samples in the training, internal and external prediction sets..

Photo by Angelo Pantazis on Unsplash

This study (open access) aimed to develop a non-invasive computer-vision method based on deep learning to detect water adulteration in orange juice.  The model was trained on three juices (freshly squeezed juice, juice from concentrate, and orange nectar ) with water-adulteration levels ranging from 1% to 15%

The authors repeated the study with different shutter-speed-based exposure conditions.  Training data were analyzed using ResNet50 convolutional neural networks. The best classification accuracy (88%) was found with images acquired at 1/250 s

The model was then evaluated using 240 independently prepared and blindly coded samples obtained from subsequent purchases of the same three commercial products. This independent blind validation achieved a 24-class accuracy of 86.7%. Misclassifications occurred predominantly between adjacent or closely related water-adulteration levels within the same juice product. The authors report that when the independent-validation predictions were collapsed into a binary pure-versus-adulterated screening task, the model achieved 100.0% sensitivity, 93.3% specificity, 99.2% accuracy, and 96.7% balanced accuracy.

They conclude that the method is feasible as a rapid pre-screening tool for detecting visible-image patterns associated with controlled water dilution when there is no need to discriminate between different levels of adulteration. The independent validation provides evidence of transferability to newly prepared samples from subsequent purchases of the same products. However, further validation across additional brands, production batches, orange origins, seasons, and acquisition environments is required before broader applicability can be established.  

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The Food Standards Agency have published their incidents prevention report for September here.  You can sign up to receive these free reports direct to your e-mail by using the same link.

These short monthly bulletins cover all food safety and food authenticity issues.  They include basic mitigation steps that all food businesses should take.

Issues highlighted in September include undeclared food colours and compliance failures at import and border control.  These are themes picked up in all incident collation tools signposted on FAN's "Incident Trends" page, which signposts a range of different reports that give a variety of different insight from different data sources.

This monthly highlights report has been produced for FAN members by one of our Partner organisations, iComplai.

The report is an AI-generated prioritised digest.  It is blended from online regulatory and media reports of food fraud incidents and suspicions, giving a summary of each selected issue and suggested mitigation steps.

iComplai are one of a number of commercial providers of digital horizon scanning tools, many of whom are signposted by FAN on our Incident Trends hub.  We do not endorse any specific company.  We are grateful to iComplai for providing this free digest which we hope you find useful.

If you know of a tool which would be beneficial to signpost to our membership, or if you are interested in becoming a FAN Partner, then please get in touch.

It is rare for scientific publications to focus objectives that were unachieved, or results that failed.  This is unfortunate, as such studies can offer valuable insight to other researchers.

In this paper (USD $27 purchase required) the authors report a near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy-based partial least squares regression (PLS) method for distinguishing and quantifying soluble coffee and soluble chicory percentages in a solid mixture. They also attempted a NIR-based PLS method to distinguish soluble Arabica coffee, soluble Robusta coffee and soluble chicory in one shot; however, they found that NIR with PLS is unable to differentiate soluble Robusta and soluble Arabica when these three components are in a mixture.  They contrasted this with ¹H NMR and ¹³C NMR spectroscopy, which could differentiate.

They conclude that their results show the limitations of NIR spectroscopy in combination with PLS to distinguish the type of soluble coffee (soluble Arabica and soluble Robusta) when mixed with soluble chicory.

Photo by Archer Allstars on Unsplash

A new British and European standard, BS EN 18218-1:2026, Food authenticity – Non-targeted testing methods – Part 1: General considerations and definitions, has been published.

Non-targeted testing methods are increasingly used to assess food authenticity by generating a broader analytical “fingerprint” of a sample rather than looking only for predetermined markers. Approaches can include spectroscopy, NMR, mass spectrometry and DNA-based techniques.

Photo by Beatriz Pérez Moya on Unsplash

The new standard provides common terminology and general guidance for the development and validation of non-targeted methods for food and feed authentication. It covers key considerations such as reference datasets, statistical models and assessment of method performance.

Developed through CEN Technical Committee 460 (Food Authenticity), the standard should help support greater consistency and scientific robustness in the use of non-targeted methods by laboratories, researchers, regulators and the food industry.

BS EN 18218-1:2026 is available through BSI in the UK and through other national standards organisations across Europe.

Assimilated law (formerly retained EU law in Great Britain) and EU poultry marketing legislation require poultry meat to be marketed as fresh (chilled), frozen or quick-frozen, as applicable. Previously frozen poultry must not be marketed as fresh.

A robust analytical method for distinguishing fresh from previously frozen poultry has now been published as a European standard: EN 18179:2026, Food authenticity — Method for detecting previously frozen poultry meat by determination of HADH activity. The standard is available through national standards organisations. In the UK, it is available via BSI: BSOL British Standards Online.

The method measures β-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase (HADH) activity in juice expressed from poultry meat samples. The ratio of HADH activity before and after laboratory freezing is compared with a defined cut-off value to determine whether the sample has previously been frozen.

EN 18179:2026 is believed to be the first published standard to specify a chemical/ biochemical analytical method for determining whether poultry meat has previously been frozen, providing a robust analytical tool for food authenticity testing, regulatory enforcement and consumer confidence.

The July 2026  EU Agri-Food Suspicions has been published.  You can read all of the reports here.  

There has been a drop from the increased number of suspicions seen in June, and a much more even spread of suspicions and incidents across different criminal activities (the bubble scale on our graphs is normalised to the largest top-right bubble - unlicenced trade - so as this bubble has reduced in absolute terms the relative scale of the other bubbles has increased). 

Suspicions that caught my eye this month

• the first time that I can recall seeing a confirmed detection of plant protein (pea) as an adulterant in meat mince
• the reappearance of regular old foes; Sudan dyes in palm oil and in ground spices
• undeclared preservatives, particularly sulphites in dried fruits or preservatives in "fresh" fish

As well as traceability and document fraud, and unlicensed food businesses and import, the most frequent fraud continues to be the bulking of frozen fish and seafood, either with simple excess glaze or with excess use of polyphosphates.  Plus packaged food being underweight, either in net quantity or in the declared percentage of a premium ingredient (for example, pistachio nuts in baklava).

These EU AgriFood Suspicions reports are only one information source, presenting one approach to estimating fraud frequency.  There are many other approaches, each looking at different data for different purposes.  An overview can be found on FAN's "Incident Trends" page.

 Our interpretation of the Agrifood suspicion reports is subjective. In order to show consistent trends we have excluded cases which appear to be unauthorised sale but with no intent to mislead consumers (e.g. unapproved food additives, novel foods which are declared on pack), we have excluded unauthorised health claims on supplements, and we have excluded residues and contaminants above legal limits.  We have grouped the remaining incidents into crude categories.  Our analysis is intended only to give a high-level overview

Rendered fats are vulnerable to species adulteration and also to low-level accidental species cross-contamination which would exclude them from some religious diets.  Species verification testing is difficult, particularly techniques that can be used in an in-process setting.  They lack obvious morphological markers (e.g., adipocyte size and distribution, connective tissue architecture, and species-specific fat coloration).  Conventional quantitative PCR (qPCR) suffers from matrix inhibition and amplification bias in lipid-rich matrices unless expensive matrix-matched Certified Reference Materials are available for each run.

This paper (open access) reports the inter-laboratory validation of a precalibrated droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) screening method which avoids these problems. Species-specific biological coefficients were established from pure fats and interspecies signal conversion factors from aqueous-phase recovery experiments.

Validation was across five laboratories and four ddPCR platforms.

The authors report that the method achieved acceptable reproducibility and recoveries at adulteration 5–50% (w/w) but was semi-quantitative at lower concentrations corresponding to accidental contamination.  Near the limit of quantification, porcine at 5% and equine at 10% showed systematic positive bias, requiring semi-quantitative reporting; ovine at 10% showed negative bias and requires confirmatory testing in interlaboratory application. In-house LOQs were 5% (porcine) and 10% (bovine, equine, ovine); interlaboratory reporting limits were 5% (porcine), 10% (equine), and 20% (bovine, ovine). Analysis takes 2.5 h per sample. In blind testing of six samples, species were correctly detected and quantified in all five commercial fats; a plant-based control yielded no signal, falling outside the validated scope.

The authors conclude that this screening-level approach supports monitoring of critical control points (CCPs) in rendering facilities, and also regulatory screening testing at customs inspection stations.

This review (purchase required,$USD 31.50)  critically evaluates the comparative analytical performance, operational failure modes, and regulatory integration requirements of each technology for food fraud control.  The authors assert that rapid DNA-based methods — including polymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA barcoding, next-generation sequencing (NGS), and CRISPR-Cas diagnostics — have emerged as transformative analytical tools for food fraud control, offering high specificity, applicability to processed matrices, and increasing compatibility with decentralized deployment. Artificial intelligence (AI) further enhances these platforms by enabling automated pattern recognition, fraud risk inference, and intelligence-driven surveillance.  

Rather than describing individual technologies in isolation, the authors have set out to give a structured comparative analysis of detection performance across real-world food control conditions, including matrix effects, DNA degradation, and database limitations.  They also propose an evidence-based technology selection framework aligned with regulatory enforcement objectives.  Finally, they analyse specific standardization and legislative gaps that currently limit operational deployment.

Key findings indicate that CRISPR-Cas assays show the greatest promise for rapid field screening but lacks ISO/AOAC validation; NGS is essential for unknown adulterant discovery but requires bioinformatic standardization; and AI provides the critical decision-support layer for proactive, risk-based surveillance. The authors conclude that these findings are directly relevant to food safety management system design, official method selection, and international regulatory harmonization efforts

EFF-CoP Summer Update: Collaboration, Knowledge and New Voices

Summer may traditionally be a quieter period, but July and August 2026 remained active months for the  EFF-CoP. From collaborative events and Living Lab outcomes to new expert voices and resources, the project continued bringing together the food fraud community and sharing knowledge across Europe.

Joining forces for food system security

On 3 July 2026, EFF-CoP joined SecureFood, ACT4FOOD and DEFENSEFOOD for the joint webinar “Advancing Food System Security: Innovations, Tools and Collaborative Strategies.” The webinar brought together expertise from different European initiatives addressing food security, food safety and resilience. It provided an opportunity to exchange knowledge, identify synergies and demonstrate the importance of collaboration when responding to the increasingly complex challenges affecting European food systems.

From discussion to co-innovation: the first EFF-CoP Living Lab

The summer also provided an opportunity to share the outcomes of the 1st Social Co-Innovation Living Lab, organised by REZOS at the University of Patras, Greece, on 29–30 June 2026. Using a participatory and community-based approach, stakeholders worked together to identify real-world food fraud challenges, map relevant actors, assess potential impacts across the food chain and propose possible solutions and capacity-building needs.The outcomes from the two working groups, complemented by feedback from consortium partners, have now been brought together in a dedicated report. The results provide valuable insights into how collaborative approaches can contribute to identifying priorities and strengthening the capacity of the food fraud community. The full document with the Living Lab results is available HERE.

Catching up with EFF-CoP

July also saw the publication of the third EFF-CoP Newsletter, bringing together the project's main developments from January to June 2026. Among the highlights was the 1st Authentic Food Fraud Festival & Conference, held in Dublin on 27–28 May. The event welcomed around 130 participants from 18 countries, alongside 45 speakers and moderators, 25 posters and 80 volunteers, combining scientific exchange with creative and interactive approaches to discussing food fraud. Meanwhile, the EFF-CoP community continues to grow. By July 2026, the project's social media channels had reached more than 4,400 followers.

Bringing consortium voices into the conversation

EFF-CoP also launched a series of short interviews during the summer, putting the spotlight on the people behind EFF-CoP. Through short and accessible conversations, researchers and professionals are invited to share their expertise, experiences and perspectives on food authenticity and fraud prevention.

Looking ahead

As summer has come to an end, EFF-CoP is already looking towards its next activities.

On 7 September 2026, a new stakeholder survey on food fraud macro-scenarios was launched. The survey will invite stakeholders to provide feedback that will help shape the project's scientific research agenda, identifying key research and innovation needs for addressing the evolving food fraud landscape over the next ten years. The results will also contribute to the development of the EFF-CoP White Paper.

After an active summer, EFF-CoP enters the new season with the same goal at its heart: connecting people, sharing knowledge and strengthening collaboration to better understand, prevent and address food fraud across Europe.

This update has also been added to FAN's EFF-CoP page.

What will the food fraud landscape look like over the next ten years, and what research and innovation will we need to stay ahead of emerging threats?

Food fraud is constantly evolving in response to changes in global food systems, technology, supply chains, economic pressures, climate-related challenges and emerging risks. Understanding how these developments could shape food fraud over the next decade is essential for identifying where future research and innovation efforts should be focused.

The EFF-CoP project is inviting stakeholders to share their views through a new survey developed by FAN as part of Work Package 2 (needs of EFF-CoP and future research agenda).

The survey explores the relevance and potential application of food fraud scenarios developed by the project.

Why your contribution matters

By participating, stakeholders can directly contribute their knowledge and experience and help steer the future direction of food fraud research in Europe and worldwide.

Whether you work in research, the food industry, official controls, laboratories, policy, technology, consumer organisations or another area related to food authenticity and food fraud prevention, your perspective can help us better understand the challenges ahead.

The feedback collected through this survey will help assess the relevance and potential application of the food fraud scenarios developed by the project and inform the development of a White Paper setting out a future research agenda for better food fraud prevention.

The survey comprises just 8 questions and should take only a few minutes to complete. It will remain open until 09:00 BST on          5 October 2026:

https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/maQW7WgEih?origin=lprLink

Your experience matters. Together, we can help ensure that future research and innovation address the real and emerging needs of the community.

Thank you,

FAN EFF-CoP Project Team

An investigation in the Naples area of Italy (see publication here – open access) found multiple compliance, hygiene, labelling and food safety issues with imported foods on sale in retailers supplying ethnic communities;  primarily Pakistani, Ukrainian, Filipino, and Chinese shops.  The researchers conclude that there is evidence of deliberate, widespread and systematic avoidance of EU import controls, with implications much wider than just the local area sampled.  Products of animal origin and other high-risk foods were a particular concern, along with unlabelled allergens.  Evidence collected during the Naples investigation suggested that the retailers are the endpoints of a broader illicit distribution network rather than being the primary importers. Investigators found rolls and bundles of adhesive labels stored with packaged products, including inside cartons, supporting the researchers' hypothesis that illicit products and false labelling materials were supplied together, with labels subsequently applied at the point of retail.

The researchers, particularly, recommend the improved use of AI by regulators to match local-language retail labels against the imported originals (e.g. in Chinese language) to spot anomalies and absence of mandatory information.

Port wines attract a price premium dependent on their age and variety.  In this study (open access) the authors built an FT-IR model to differentiate Colheita, Tawny, Vintage, and Late Bottled Vintage ports by variety and by age.

The authors relate the differences in spectral signatures back to different oxidation conditions and temperatures during the port’s production and maturation, and discuss the chemical changes such as Strecker degradation, Maillard-type pathways, and the formation of furanic compounds derived from sugar degradation, and show that the consequential spectral changes can be predictable with age.

The authors analysed a data set of 7281 spectra from the four commercial categories using classical chemometric methods and machine learning models.

They found that for category classification, a support vector machine with a radial basis function kernel gave the best performance. For age prediction, a deep ensemble model achieved an R² value of 0.9803 and a mean absolute error of 1.25 years. A hybrid two-stage random forest model, designed to account for category-specific aging regimes, achieved comparable performance, with an R² of 0.9630 and a mean absolute error of 1.28 years, while requiring lower computational resources. Leverage-based prediction intervals provided per-sample uncertainty estimates with a 97.7% empirical coverage.

Feature importance analysis identified three main spectral regions, around 1740, 1050, and 1600–1450 cm^–1.  These features could be related back to known chemical pathways occurring during Port wine aging.

They conclude that the results demonstrate that FT-IR spectroscopy, combined with appropriate modeling strategies, can support rapid, nondestructive, and scalable estimation of Port wine age, offering a promising complementary tool for certification and authenticity control.

Photo by Irene Kredenets on Unsplash

fiin’s Q2 2026 Commodity Watchlist is now live on the Hub.

Food fraud risk continues to evolve. While Q1 was dominated by energy security, geopolitical instability, and fertiliser costs, Q2 sees water scarcity and drought move to the forefront, with impacts across agriculture, fisheries, supply chains and logistics.

The latest watchlist draws on more than 12,000 test results submitted by 75 fiin members, covering products from 62 countries of origin, alongside horizon scanning intelligence from our Technical Steering Group.

Key themes this quarter include:

• Climate, drought and water pressures
• Geopolitical and trade disruption
• Changing supply chains and sourcing
• Animal disease and biosecurity
• Authenticity, provenance and documentation

Access the SME Hub here to explore the latest insights by commodity.

All SME Hub content is free to use, so please feel free to share it with your wider networks.

Cell Cultivated Products (CCPs) represent an emerging class of novel foods produced through the culture and differentiation of animal or plant cells which includes cells from meat, seafood, fat and offal, offering potential benefits in sustainability, animal welfare, and food system resilience. As these products progress toward commercialisation, there is a growing need to understand how analytical methods can be applied to verify their authenticity, detect adulteration, and support effective regulatory oversight.

This project funded by the Food Standards Agency and delivered by LGC, focused on animal-derived CCPs, providing a comprehensive landscape review of current and emerging analytical methods with potential applicability to CCP detection and traceability, combined with an extensive programme of stakeholder engagement across industry, government, academia and the analytical community.

The review highlighted that no single analytical approach is currently sufficient to characterise or authenticate CCPs due to their inherent variability, evolving production methods, and similarity to conventional meat. Instead, a weight of evidence (WoE) framework drawing on genomics, proteomics, chromatography, spectroscopy, structural analysis and digital tools shows the greatest promise for analytical detection of CCPs. The work also identified major challenges including a lack of validated methods, limited reference materials, confidentiality barriers, and cost or accessibility constraints, which currently hinder the development of robust analytical testing strategies.

Stakeholder insights reaffirmed the need for harmonised standards, inter-laboratory studies, well-characterised datasets, and rapid, cost-effective screening tools to complement advanced laboratory methods. The project concluded that early establishment of metrological principles, traceability systems, regulatory clarity, and strong collaboration across sectors will be essential to maintain consumer confidence and ensure CCP integrity as the market expands. In order of priority, this report recommended further work be conducted on weight of evidence approaches, digital barcoding, epigenetics and microbial profiling, as approaches which may have the greatest potential for analytical CCP traceability. Overall, this work provided an evidence-based foundation to guide future method development, support regulatory preparedness, and inform a coherent national approach to CCP authenticity testing.

Read full report: https://doi.org/10.46756/001c.167297

This report will be added to the FAN Research Finder.

In this study, (open access) an extraction-free loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay with a visual colorimetric readout was developed for rapid and on-site identification of pork. The reaction conditions were first optimized using purified DNA to minimize matrix interference, during which a COI-targeting primer set was selected and analytical sensitivity determined.

 For direct tissue analysis, a simple toothpick sampling approach was introduced. A sterile bamboo toothpick was inserted into the tissue sample and gently probed five times to collect material. The toothpick tip was then inserted vertically into a pre-aliquoted LAMP master mix and rotated for 10 s to release sample contents.

Tris-HCl buffer (1.5 M, pH 8.8) was incorporated to counteract matrix acidity and stabilize color development of the pH-sensitive indicator. This enabled clear color differentiation under daylight without the need for UV illumination.

The authors report that, using this toothpick sampling method, pork adulteration as low as 0.05% (w/w) was detected within 20 min requiring no specialized instrumentation. Validation with 20 commercial meat products demonstrated complete agreement between LAMP results, qPCR, and Sanger sequencing, confirming the robustness and practical suitability of this assay for field authentication of pork adulteration.

For an explanation of LAMP, see our Analytical Explainers pages.

Photo by Ric Matkowski on Unsplash

In this paper (purchase required, GBP £29.95) the authors present a biosensing platform termed one-pot TLAMP-PfAgo assay (OTPA) that integrates the rapid amplification of turn-back loop primer-accelerated loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) (TLAMP) with the sequence-specific detection of Pyrococcus furiosus Argonaute (PfAgo).

They report that this system features a novel heat-activatable design using microcrystalline wax to spatially separate reactions within a single tube, enabling contamination-free and streamlined operation. The OTPA assay achieves sensitive and specific detection, with limits of detection as low as 3×10⁻⁴ ng/µL for pork DNA and 2×10⁻⁴ ng/µL for beef DNA within 30 minutes. It successfully enables duplex target identification and has been validated with commercial meat products, showing concordance with standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based qualitative detection.

The result can be directly visualized under blue light

They conclude that this is a  cost-effective and simple platform for point-of-use testing.

For an explanation of LAMP principles, see also FAN’s Analytical Explainers pages.

Cargo theft, on a large and highly organised scale, is one of the current food fraud watchouts around the world.  The risk has been highlighted by regulatory authorities including the National Food Crime Unit in the UK.

Recent examples have been as simple as hijacked lorries, or as sophisticated as fake company details and documentation used to collect consignments from despatch centres.  There has been at least one example of corrupt insiders (employees of the victim company) falsifying or hiding records in order to despatch consignments to criminal collaborators.

In the latest example, a truck carrying 40,000 pounds of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer was stolen from a distribution centre in Montclair, California.  Thanks to FAN member, and advisory board member, Quincy Lissaur, for highlighting this story.  You can read one of the many media reports here.

General mitigation advice includes looking with a critical eye at despatch and commercial orders documentation for signs of forgeries, and double-checking the company history of any new or unexpected delivery contractors.

Photo by MOHD FADZILLAH SULAIMAN on Unsplash