News

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.

In March 2021, the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific published a booklet entitled “Food fraud – Intention, detection and management”. This concise resource explains the key aspects of food fraud, and discusses a set of measures that food safety authorities can take to stop food fraud. Among these, legal interventions combined with the use of new technologies are promising tools.

Examples of these interventions, such as adopting a definition for food fraud and implementing food standards as well as applying DNA barcoding and blockchain technology, are included in the booklet. Links are readily available in the booklet for those who wish to have greater know-how on the guidance on food labelling, technological interventions and food import and export certification systems provided by FAO and the Codex Alimentarius.

Download the publication:
FAO Food safety toolkit booklet 5 - Food fraud – Intention, detection and management

For more information:

• Handbook on food labelling to protect consumers
• Food for thought on food fraud. Development Law – Issue 1
• Codex Committee on Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems. Discussion Paper on “Food Integrity and Food Authenticity”, CX/FICS 18/24/7
• Food safety page - FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific 

This report contextualises the topic of food fraud across Canada’s agri-food system and presents a novel intervention framework to Deter, Identify and Prosecute (DIP) food fraud.

In this context, deter refers to the strengthening of regulatory and legal deterrents. Identify refers to the
scientific methods to identify food fraud and prosecute refers to the ability to use
the scientific evidence as a basis to prosecute bad actors.

The authors believe that this novel framework captures and integrates the key components which are essential
to reducing the risk of food fraud in Canada.

Read full report.

IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) accept a limited number of interns each year, and this month it has advertised two internships on its website to be involved with its laboratory research on food authenticity methodology. Both internships are based in the IAEA Laboratory in Seibersdorf, Austria and are for 12 months.duration.

One internship is dealing with food authenticity screening methods using bench-top or portable instruments - more details here.

The other is performing isotope ratio mass spectrometry analysing food and beverage samples - more details here.

The links above also permit application on-line (after registration) and the closing date is 26/06/2021. If you wish to apply please do so directly, but also can you mention that you learnt about the two internships on the Food Authenticity Network website.