JRC's Knowledge Centre publishes a monthly summary on articles and news about food fraud and adulteration, and has just published its June 2018 Newsletter. The top stories cover: adulterated Verdicchio wine in Italy;false buffalo mozzarella cheese in Benelux supermarkets; and investigations into the French spice market revealed 51% of all samples subject to fraud with saffron being the highest number of fraudulent samples.
Read the June 2018 summary here
Coffee is currently the second largest commodity on the world market. Brazilian researchers have written a comprehensive review on the development and use of chromatograpy from paper to gas and hplc, and finally ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry to confirm adulteration and fraud in coffee.
Read the full review here
US-based technology and content solutions provider Decernis has acquired the Food Fraud Database from USP. USP's Global Strategic Marketing and Programme senior vice-president Salah Kivlighn said: “We are very pleased to have found an appropriate home for the Food Fraud Database, which hundreds of companies depend on to help support their efforts to prevent food adulteration". USP will continue to provide critical resources to help the industry, along with regulators and other stakeholders, verify the identity, quality and purity of food ingredients. The database is updated continuously with ingredients and related records, which are gathered from scientific literature, media publications, regulatory reports, judicial records and trade associations worldwide.
Read the article here
Polish researchers have published a paper on the development of rapid, simple, and non-destructive analytical procedure for discrimination and authentication of whiskies originating from Scotland, Ireland and USA as well as time of maturation (two, three, six and twelve years). Combination of data from Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) with statistical analysis was used to construct eight discriminant models. The models obtained permitted whiskies from Scotland, Ireland, and USA to be distinguished from each other, and 2 and 3 years old beverages from 6 and 12 years old whiskies. Results show that 100% of samples were correctly classified in models discriminating American and Scottish whiskies or 2-year-old and 6-year-old American whiskies. American whiskies were classified correctly in all models, which may suggest its considerable chemical difference compared to whisky produced in Scotland or Ireland.
Read the full paper here
The EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has assessed the counterfeiting losses for the wine and spirits sector, which was in the top five sectors for lost sales. The overall losses due to counterfeiting for 13 sectors amounts to Euros 60bn, corresponding to 7.5% of sales, and probably resulting in 434,00 less jobs because of reduced sales.
Read the article here
U.S. labelling laws require that only species of the family Ictaluridae can be marketed as catfish. The lower production price of Pangasiidae, combined with changes in regulations over time, have resulted in high potential for species substitution and country of origin mislabelling among catfish products. The objective of this study was to conduct a market survey of catfish products sold at the U.S. retail level to examine species mislabelling and compliance with Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) regulations. A total of 80 catfish samples were collected from restaurants, grocery stores and fish markets in Orange County, CA. DNA was extracted from each sample and tested with a real-time PCR Kit for Ictaluridae spp. Samples that tested negative for Ictaluridae were tested with real-time PCR Kit for Pangasiidae spp. DNA barcoding was used as a final test in cases where species could not be identified with either of the real-time PCR assays. Overall, 7 of the 80 (9%) catfish products were found to be substituted with Pangasiidae species, these were attributed to 5 of the 40 restaurant samples and 2 of the 32 grocery store samples. In addition, 59% of grocery store samples were not compliant with COOL regulations.
Read the abstract here
EU Regulation No. 1379/2013 states clearly that “the commercial designation of the species and its scientific name” must be shown whenever a fish sold along with its production method (wild or farmed) and where caught or raised. Fish traders in the port of Marseille were fined by Government fish inspectors sums varying from Euros 450 -1500 for not displaying all of this information including the scientific name.
However, the Mayor of Marseille related this occurrence to President Macron during a lunch with him last week. The President laughed and promised that the fines would not have to paid nor would the traders need to use the scientific (latin) names.
Read the article here
The new guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration aims to help food businesses understand and comply with the new Intentional Adulteration Rule, which comes into effect in July 2019. The IA Rule requires businesses to implement strategies to reduce the risk of intentional adulteration at food facilities that are particularly vulnerable.
The 94-page draft guidance, which is the first of three installments, includes chapters on the Food Defense Plan, vulnerability assessment, and mitigation strategies. The other installments will be released later in the year.
Read the full guidance here.
Under the Horizon Europe programme, which focuses on the future funding of food and agriculture research by the European Commission, investment in food research and innovation will see an increase. The Commission has earmarked €10 billion for the food sector, with an emphasis on food safety, which has €1.68 billion confirmed. This embraces quite a wide area of research which could include the safety issues arising out of food fraud.
Read more about the programme on FoodNavigator.
Imprint Analytics GmbH have published a paper in the Journal of Food Science and Technology on the analysis of coconut waters for authenticity testing. Coconut water is becoming more prevalent as a healthy, low carb alternative to other beverages and is defined as a juice by the European Fruit Juice Association (AIJN).
The study analysed 30 authentic coconut waters, that were extracted from coconuts in the lab, and 24 commercial coconut waters purchased from shops to investigate the detection of added C-4 plant sugars to the drinks.
Find the study here.
Researchers in Ireland have published a paper which discusses current and evolving techniques to determine geographical origins of meat. The paper explores applications of meat authenticity techniques including spectrscopy, stable isotope ratio analysis, and the measurement of compounds derived from the animals' diets. The authors also discuss challenges in interpretation of the data.
Read the abstract here.
Agroscope have collaborated with SwissDeCode on a test to determine the authenticity of bacterial cultures in cheese. The mobile test kit, developed with funding from Swiss Food Research, are able to extract and identify two bacterial strains at room temperature. In the past, samples that were deemed suspicious were sent to BerneLiebefeld lab for analysis, which typically took somewhere between 1 to 2 weeks for a response. The new kit produces results in less than one hour.
Read the entire story here, or for the original story in German and French, read here.
Prosecco, a product with protected designation of origin, is produced in only nine areas near the Italian cities of Venice and Trieste. Last month, FSA investigators siezed a shipment of thousands of bottles which were labelled as 'Prosecco', but were actually sparkling wine produced in Moldova.
Read more about the story here.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska carried out an interesting robust study to examine how information about food fraud incidents affects consumers’ valuation of products. Specifically, the study examined:
- changes in consumers’ valuation of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) after they received information about food fraud,
- how information about food fraud attributable to one country affects valuation for products from other countries, and
- how information about food fraud affects the valuation of olive oils in different price segments.
Read the article at: consumer EVOO study
Chinese researchers have developed a very rapid (30 mins) DNA test that can detect multiple meat species including duck, chicken, cow, sheep and pig, which is easier, and requires less equipment than other techniques. The method is based on recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) – a rapid alternative to PCR developed by UK biotech TwistDx Ltd combined with the nucleic acid stain SYBR green I produced by Life Technologies’ Molecular Probes subsidiary to visualise the results, and is carried out in a water bath at 37 degrees C. The method was able to detect 1 per cent pork adulteration in mutton or beef, and could also differentiate species in boiled, microwaved, pressure-cooked or fried meat samples.
Read the article at: rapid DNA test for meat species
A new early warning system for fraud has been developed by Fera as part of the EU FoodIntegrity project. Vahid Mojtahed, Fera, gave a presentation on the new system at the ASSET 2018 Summit of Global Food Integrity, in Belfast, 28-31 May. The system takes data from the JRC European Media Monitoring system, which collects information on food fraud in 60 different languages from media and medical sources. The data is fed through a Bayesian network to compute the probabilities of food fraud developing in the supply chain. Mojtahed said that " with respect to adulteration and substitution of the main food categories, the system can detect anomalies 92% of the time in the active food supply chain 3-6 months before a fraud incident".
Read the article at: fraud early warning system
Manuka honey is high value food because of its anti-bacterial properties, and hence it is often open to adulteration. New Zealand researchers have developed a new method based on using 4 chemical and 2 DNA markers that can authenticate monofloral and multifloral NZ Manuka honey and distinguish then from non-Manuka honey, Australian Manuka honey and honey from Leptospermum spp.
Read the full paper here
As part of the EU Project FoodIntegrity, Newcastle University carried out an in-depth consumer study with Chinese consumers on their attitude to food fraud and food safety following some high profile incidents. The results show that these incidents, which involved fatalities, have resulted in a lack of trust in the authenticity and safety of food produced in China. Many Chinese consumers now have an increased trust in imported foods from Europe and regard them as better quality and safer than their Chinese counterparts, although there are regional variations. However, it gives European food exporters the opportunity to capitalise on these concerns, and also know that Chinese consumers are willing to pay more for those products with indications and safeguards of authenticity.
Read the article summarising the results and the full journal paper.
The US Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is urging consumers to avoid supplements made with ginkgo biloba, which are often adulterated and have largely been shown to be ineffective in preventing dementia and improving circulation. The CSPI sent 10 samples for analysis, and 6 of these had far less ginkgo than advertised or showed evidence of having been adulterated with cheaper plant material. CSPI have written to the FDA to take action on gingo supplements. There is also other evidence, that up to 70% of gingo supplements on the US market are adulterated because the leaves of the ginkgo tree are expensive, and a large quantity of leaves is needed to produce ginkgo extracts.. The adulteration is quite sophisticated consisting of using flavonol rich plant materials such as the Japanese pagoda tree and buckwheat extracts to arrive at the pharmacopeial standard of 24% flavonol glycosides and 6% diterpene lactones.
Read CSPI's Press Release and associated article
