Marks & Spencer is combining its hygiene and product audits and preparing to roll out unannounced visits to the majority of its food suppliers in a bid to further strengthen its supply chain integrity against fraudsters looking to cash in on vulnerable companies.
Read more the full article:
http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Manufacturing/Retailer-s-plan-to-tackle-food-fraud
NFU Scotland reported that several farmers have been in touch in recent days about the deteriorating conditions for harvest - and the wider troubles of poor returns and high input costs. One area already suffering is the west of Scotland, where for many cereal growers the misery is getting worse by the day, with very little let up in the downpours that have been turning fields into swamps.
Read the full article at:
http://www.thescottishfarmer.
Commodity prices for virgin olive oil reached €4,099.52 ($4,615) per tonne last week, up more than 60% from a year earlier, according to Spanish industry group La Fundación para la Promoción y el Desarrollo del Olivar. Global retail prices have risen about 10% in the last 12 months, Euromonitor research shows.
“The main reason is a key supply issue, which happened simultaneously in the two most important countries – Spain and Italy,” said Vito Martielli, analyst at Rabobank. Crop-damaging droughts last summer shrank the Spanish harvest to 835,000 tonnes, less than half the prior season’s bumper crop of 1.78mn tonnes. In Italy, traditionally the world’s No 2 producer, insect-borne bacteria destroyed swaths of olive groves in the southeast and cut production by more than 50% to 222,000 tonnes.
Global production for 2014/15 dropped by 29%, figures from the International Olive Council (IOC) show, helping to push olive oil’s commodity price to its highest since February 2006.
Read more at:
They look like grains of black sand inside a prescription vial, but each speck is a wasp that is lethal to the offspring of the Asian citrus psyllid, an aphid-size bug that spreads the bacteria that cause Huanglongbing, or citrus greening disease. If California’s $1.8 billion citrus industry is to buy enough time to stave off the disease, which has decimated citrus crops in Florida, Mexico and Brazil, those vials may as well be hourglasses.
See article at: http://www.sfgate.com/news/
Also see full information on Huanglongbing, citrus greening disease at: http://cisr.ucr.edu/citrus_greening.html
John Houston is an Australian specialist in counterfeiting. His company, YPB, is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and sells a product called "Tracer" , a nano-particle that can be embedded in ink and labels. "The growth in fake produce, we saw this coming five or 10 years ago, but the deluge is upon us," Houston says. "For any Australian company that wants to sell in China, the message is simple. You will be copied. Your trademark will be copied. Your intellectual property will be copied. Just accept it as fact."
The value of fake goods is expected to soar to $US1.7 trillion ($2.3 trillion) worldwide in 2015, according to US security and authentication company Sekuworks – a 10,000 per cent increase from 20 years ago.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been undertaking trials of a new seafood traceability tool in response to increasing incidents of fraud in the sector, where non-sustainable fish varieties are being passed off as sustainable species.
Read full article at:
http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Ingredients/Seafood-fraud-protection-through-new-traceability-tool
Links to some key regulations for food authenticity control have now been added to the site: see the 'legislation' tab on the extended Policy and Law page.
Food manufacturers and suppliers need to ensure they are up to speed with new food safety standards, which have been introduced following ‘Horsegate’, says Michele Perrett at GlobalMeatnews.com
See http://www.globalmeatnews.com/Safety-Legislation/Suppliers-must-adhere-to-new-BRC-guidelines for the complete article
A recent US article drawing consumer attention to food adulteration issues says that "The food you’re placing in your grocery cart may not be exactly what it says it is."
Examples given include spices, olive oil, honey seafood, fruit juices and Parmesan cheese.
A new meat species authentication method designed for Halal food verification has been developed by scientists at the University of Münster, using a SCIEX QTRAP® 6500 LC-MS/MS system. BusinessWire reports that the method that can detect multiple species simultaneously.
The Food and Drink Federation have welcomed the creation and launch of the UK's new Virtual Food Authenticity Network, and have committed to support their members in the food authenticity testing they undertake. They have also produced a best practice Food Authenticity Guide. The announcement can be found on the FDF website.
A recent survey undertaken by professor Chris Elliott on behalf of Which? magazine has found that a quarter of 78 samples labelled as oregano contained other ingredients, in some cases forming up to 70% of the product.
Site members can also find a new member discussion on this issue on the site's discussion pages.
Social media can be a company’s best friend for communicating to consumers - but the tables can quickly turn when consumers talk back. So should food companies get hashtag-happy when dealing with sensitive issues such as food scandals?
Read the full article at:
At the height of the Maggi Noodles furore, when labs across the country were sending their test results to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the FSSAI made it a point to praise Delhi’s “perfect reports”.
For officials in the national capital’s government food safety department, however, it was not exactly a matter of pride — to conduct these tests, they had to seek the help of a private lab for the first time. Reason: their only lab did not have the technology, expertise or even accreditation to do the job in time.
Read the full article at:
Zero Point Zero, the US food-centric production company behind the Anthony Bourdain shows “No Reservations,” and “Parts Unknown,” is taking a dive into investigative journalism with a new, digital-only documentary series titled “Food Crimes.”
The first episode, released June 15 in partnership with ZPZ's website "Food Republic", looked at the illegal seafood business, spotlighting the case of South African fish smuggler Arnold Bengis, who was convicted of sneaking Chilean sea bass and rock lobster into the United States illegally, a player in a seafood black market believed to be a $23 billion industry. The episode's surprising revelation is that his case is not an anomaly: one-third of all fish in this country (US) is illegal.
Read the full article at:
RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags represent the fastest growing food and beverage anti-counterfeit products at 20.4% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from 2015-2020, according to Allied Market Research (AMR), an Oregon, US based market Intelligence company. It predicts the anti-counterfeiting food packaging market is set to reach $62.5b globally by 2020, with holograms moving to the top spot in the authentication technology market.
Read the full article at:
