The aim of these reports is to:

1. Assist EU Member States' authorities to identify and combat fraudulent and deceptive practices along the agri-food chain.
2. Provide valuable but selected information to stakeholders of the agri-food sector to perform adequate vulnerability assessments and identify new emerging risks.

The monthly report covers food, feedingstuff, material and articles intended to come into contact, directly or indrirectly, with food, animal welfare issues for farmed animals, plant protection products, veterinary medicianal products and other inputs that may end in the form of residues and contaminants in food and feed.

Read the April report.

Abstract

Read full paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-024-00272-z 

The World Trade Organization has published its first report on illicit trade in food and food fraud. It includes contributions from participants in the WTO’s Annual Agriculture Symposium, held on 11 and 12 December 2023, which explored this topic.

Headlines:

• International trade has helped to reduce
  global hunger, but food fraud is a growing
  problem
• Illicit trade in food and food fraud inflict
  considerable damage to international trade
  and public health
• Illicit trade in food undermines global food
  security and agri-food value chains
• The WTO rulebook brings a legal framework
  to international trade in food, helping to
  combat illicit trade
• Reducing import and export restrictions could
  diminish incentives for smuggling and illicit
  trade in food
• Modern food safety legislation can minimize
  the potential for fraudsters to exploit gaps in
  the food supply chain
• Timely, thorough investigations can disrupt
  illicit trade in food and food fraud
• Public–private collaboration and international
  cooperation can help to combat illicit trade
  in food.

Read full report.

Headlines:

• Food fraud reports published by global regulatory agencies during 2023 do not provide evidence of a consistent, significant trend during 2023.
• The activity associated with official food fraud and food safety reports remained fairly consistent across the four quarters of 2023.
• The top three commodities with the most food fraud reports varies depending on the source of reports and the tool used:
• Using official reports only, ‘Fruit, vegetables & legumes’, ‘Milk & diary products’ and ‘Beverages’ are the top three.   
• Using official, media & peer reviewed publication reports, ‘Honey’, ‘Herbs & Spices’ and ‘Meat & Poultry’ are the top three.
• The number of official food fraud reports published, by an average of thirty-six sources, is very low at only ~9% of food safety reports.
• Botanical origin fraud was the most reported type of food fraud in 2023, followed by dilution or substitution, and animal origin fraud.

FAN has collaborated with the providers of three leading commercial food fraud incident collation tools (FoodChain ID Food Fraud Database, HorizonScan and Safety HUD) to produce this report, which provides a summary of global food fraud reports in 2023. This report is the first annual report to be produced for this FAN Partner project. 

We are grateful to our Partners (McCormick & Company, Dr Ehrenstorfer and LGC Axio, Tenet Compliance & Litigation, the Food Industry Intelligence Network, the Institute of Food Science & Technology, SSAFE, Tesco, and BRCGS (LGC Assure)) for funding this work.

For 2024, Gold and Platinum FAN Partners will be sent a quarterly dashboard at the end of each quarter.

Read full report.

Researchers have evaluated recent developments in nutrition science, analytical technology and the continuing evolution of statutory regulations and conclude that most current international reference methods are no longer fit-for-purpose to accurately determine vitamin content in foods and food supplements.

They recommend that new and/or updated reference methods and regulatory standards should be considered for the analysis of vitamins A, D, E, K, B₁, B₂, B_3, B₅, B₆, B₇, B₉, B₁₂, C and carotenoids in foods and food supplements.

They also state that this area of nutrients may benefit from globally harmonised definitions specifying what compounds to include or exclude for analysis, and applicable bioactivity factors. 

Read open access paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.139383

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

One of our Partners, Tenet, has published an article that explores the threat caused by Supply Chain Fraud, how it manifests and what you can do to protect your business and customers.  

Some of the most common fraud threats that supply chains are open to are:

1. Invoice Fraud
2. Product Substitution
3. Kickbacks and Bribery
4. Data Manipulation
5. Ghost Employees and Vendors
6. Collusion and collaboration
7. Sanctions violations
8. Contract and Misrepresentation Fraud.

Read the article here.

The EC Knowledge Centre for Food Fraud and Quality (the Joint Research Centre, “JRC”) have published their monthly collation of global food fraud media reports for February 2024. 

Thanks, as always, for FAN member Bruno Sechet for formatting these into this infographic, which you can download here.  If you would like to join the JRCs mailing list to sign up for these monthly summaries then the link is here.  You can also follow Bruno's LinkedIn feed here.

Other interesting articles signposted by the JRC:

• The United Kingdom Food Standards Agency (FSA) has updated its guidance for the private sector to prevent food crime.
  Food.gov.uk     Food-safety
• DG SANTE ACN food fraud monthly reports
  The Commission has published its first monthly report on agri-food fraud suspicions. The report compiles information gathered
  from the Alert and Cooperation Network (ACN), which facilitates the exchange of information between Member States on agrifood controls. The report includes cases of cross-border non-compliance, which ACN members have identified and shared as
  suspected fraud.
  DG SANTE    Food Authenticity Network    Food Safety News
• UK FSA Surveillance Sampling Programme
  A project commissioned by the UK FSA led to the sampling of retail food products from food business operators (e.g. national
  supermarkets and small independent retailers) in October 2022. A total of 1 215 food samples from 28 different food
  commodity types were collected and tested. 81% of the samples tested for compliance were satisfactory.
  FSA    Food Authenticity Network

 We are delighted to be collaborating with the Global Alliance (GA) on Food Crime to bring a dedicated page for the GA on our website.

The GA is a coalition of international leaders who have agreed to work together on the prevention, detection and disruption of food crime. The GA initially agreed to have a small number of founder participants, consisting of food regulatory and enforcement organisations from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, but are looking to involve any country that is willing and able to contribute to the aims and objectives of the GA moving forward. 

The current Chair of the GA is Ron McNaughton, Head of the Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit at Food Standards Scotland, who said “Its fantastic that the Global Alliance now has a page on the Food Authenticity Network’s website. This gives us the ability to share information on the work of the GA in one place. This will be particularly important in terms of outlining progress towards achieving our strategic objectives, so many thanks to the Network for providing this great opportunity.”

Visit the Global Alliance page for more information and updates.

We are delighted to present our Annual Summary, which highlights key activities and outputs from 2023.

It contains news about our membership and users of the website, as well as the activities of the Team at UK and international events. Information of new government reports and new content added to the website is presented, as well information of the categories of open access resources available on the website with a spotlight on our popular food fraud prevention pages.

The types of food authenticity Centres of Expertise are shown, as is the Food Chain ID data for 2023, which gives the foods most reported as being fraudulent.

Our 2023 awards and surveys are also highlighted as well as our funding Partners, without whom we would not be able to operate the Food Authenticity Network as an open access resource for all stakeholders globally.

Download your copy here and please share with your colleagues.

A new report has been published by the UK Food Standards Agency on a review of methods for the analysis of culinary herbs and spices for authenticity.

Herbs and spices are a commodity group that consistently appear in the top ten commodities most reported as being adulterated. Due to the large variety of products that fall within the category of herbs and spices, complex global supply chains and commercial production processes, methods for verifying their authenticity / detecting fraud are not straight forward.

The main aim of this project was to identify methods for the analysis of culinary herbs and spices, in their dehydrated or dried form, for authenticity with a focus on detecting deliberate adulteration.

Authenticity testing of herbs and spices is a complex matter, and the analytical approaches used for the authenticity testing of herbs and spices are very much dependent on stakeholder needs and the purpose of testing. All methods and technologies used for the authenticity testing of herbs and spices suffer from the same issues of the lack of reliable reference samples, and difficulty of accessing proprietary validated datasets, on which to validate the methods to demonstrate their fitness for purpose. 

Read the full report and recommendations here. The report has also been added to the Research Reports section of this website.

A Toolkit to Support Weight of Evidence Approaches for Food Authenticity Investigations has been published by Defra.

Applying a weight of evidence approach for food authenticity investigation is relevant in situations where screening tests which do not give a definitive answer are used, for example with non-targeted fingerprinting approaches for food authenticity testing which rely on probability-based interpretation of the data. In these situations, gathering and assessing the weight of evidence can help in drawing a conclusion on the authenticity of a sample/product.

This document provides a structured outline on how to approach a weight of evidence assessment to verify the authenticity of food and drink samples where there is no single confirmatory test result available.

It has been developed by a sub-group of Defra’s Authenticity Methods Working Group (AMWG), drawing on analytical testing, enforcement, and food industry expertise.                                                                                                                                                                                             

Access the Weight of Evidence Toolkit.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 This report has also been added to the 'Guides' tab of the 'Tools_Guides_reports' part of our Food Fraud Prevention section.

The European Parliament and Council agreed to review and strengthen the existing marketing standards applicable to honey, fruit juices, jams and milk. The so-called Breakfast Directives lay down common rules on the composition, sales names, labelling and presentation of these products to ensure their free movement within the internal market and help consumers make informed choices.

The revised Directives agreed upon by the co-legislators will introduce the following changes:

• Mandatory origin labelling for honey:  the countries of origin in honey blends will have to appear on the label in descending order with the percentage share of each origin. Member States will have the flexibility to require percentages for the four largest shares only when they account for more than 50% of the blend. The Commission is empowered by the co-legislators to introduce harmonised methods of analysis to detect honey adulteration with sugar, a uniform methodology to trace the origin of honey and criteria to ascertain that honey is not overheated when sold to the final consumer. A Platform will be set up to advise the Commission on those matters. This will limit fraudulent practices and increase the transparency of the food chain.

• Innovation and market opportunities for fruit juices in line with new consumers demands: Three new categories will become available: ‘reduced-sugar fruit juice‘, ‘reduced-sugar fruit juice from concentrate‘ and ‘concentrated reduced-sugar fruit juice‘. This way consumers can choose a juice with at least 30% less sugars. It will be possible for fruit juices to indicate on their labels that “fruit juices contain only naturally occurring sugars” to clarify that, contrary to fruit nectars, fruit juices cannot by definition contain added sugars – a feature that most of the consumers are not aware of.

• Higher mandatory fruit content in jams: an increase of the minimum fruit content in jams (from 350 to 450 grams per kilo) and in extra-jams (from 450 to 500 grams per kilo) will improve the minimum quality and reduce the sugar content of these products for EU consumers. Member States will be allowed to authorise the term ‘marmalade' as a synonym of ‘jam', to take into account of the name commonly used locally for these products. The term “marmalade” was authorised until now only for citrus jams.

• Simplified labelling for milk: the distinction between ‘evaporated' and ‘condensed' milk will be removed, in line with the Codex Alimentarius standard. Lactose-free dehydrated milk will also be authorised.

The political agreement reached by the European Parliament, Council and Commission is now subject to formal approval by the co-legislators. From entry into force 20 days after publication of the final text, Member States will have 18 months to transpose the new provisions into national law and 6 more months before it applies throughout the European Union.

Read full press release.

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published guidance on the selection and use of DNA extraction methods.

Extracting DNA of suitable quality and quantity from a test sample is a fundamental upstream step that underpins the confidence in a number of downstream analytical molecular biology based methods (e.g., qPCR. dPCR, NGS, etc.,).

This official guidance document provides advice on the selection and use of fit for purpose DNA extraction methods. Whilst this guidance uses the example of DNA extraction in the context of official controls for the analysis of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the principles it describes are universally applicable to all DNA based methods including those for food authenticity.

Advice is provided on the selection of different protocols and decision support systems, and guidance provided on validation approaches and the assessment of DNA quality parameters, further illustrated with practical examples/solutions based on extensive collective experiences.

Access guidance: DOI: 10.2760/76162 (online)

This guidance has also been added to the Quality section of this website.

A scientific paper entitled ”Authenticity Assessment of Ground Black Pepper by Combining Headspace Gas-Chromatography Ion Mobility Spectrometry and Machine Learning” has now been published in Food Research International (Elsevier journal) 

The study assessed a broad variety of authentic samples originating from eight countries and three continents. The method uses head-space gas-chromtaography ion mobility spectrometry (HS-HC-IMS), combined with machine learning. It requires no sample preparation and is rapid. In this proof-of-concept study, the methos successfully classified samples with an accuracy of >90% with a 95% level of confidence.

Access the paper for free until the end of March 2024.

Photo by Anas Alhajj on Unsplash

The European Parliament Research Service has published briefing document on geographical indications for wine, spirit drinks and agricultural products.

The note states that the Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement on the Commission's proposal for a regulation on geographical indications for wine, spirit drinks and agricultural products. The text still has to be formally adopted by the Parliament and Council.

The agreed text would bring together in a single legal document the provisions setting out the procedures for registering geographical indications (GIs) for wine, spirit drinks and agricultural products that are currently spread over three regulations. It would increase the powers and responsibilities of producer groups, lay down rules on sustainability practices, clarify rules on the use of GI products as ingredients, and improve the protection of GI products online.

Access the briefing note.

The Food Integrity Unit of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), is looking for laboratories with expertise in beeswax analyses, interested in participating in a method validation study by inter-laboratory comparison according to ISO 5725-2.                                                                
The goal is to evaluate repeatability and reproducibility of the gas chromatography based analytical method for quantifying paraffin n-alkanes respectively stearin/stearic acid in beeswax with the aim to identify potential adulteration of beeswax.                                                                                         
The participants will receive a set of beeswax test samples, the detailed analytical protocol of the method, and the necessary consumables, free of charge.                                                                   
If you interested in being part of this important project that will lead to the future standardisation of the method by an international standardisation organization, please contact: Christina.CHRISTIA@ec.europa.eu 

As the world's human population grows and climate change impacts food security, digital technologies are becoming increasingly critical for ensuring transparency, resilience, and fairness across the food system.

However, technology and digitalisation are often expensive and can be out of reach for small-scale farms and businesses. So, how can we ensure these technologies are available to all stakeholders, and the associated food is affordable for all consumers?

Here are four ways that technology can increase food system transparency, resilience and fairness (FAO report: Five ways science, technology and innovation are helping to transform the world's agrifood systems): 

1. Track food supply chains and collect secure data
2. Increase access to information and enable communication between stakeholders and with consumers
3. Monitor and predict changes to reduce and prevent risk
4. Connect small-scale producers and increase access to networks and services.

Read EIT-Food's blog on how can digital technologies increase food system transparency, resilience, and fairness?

FAO, in partnership with Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR), has developed this technical background document to raise awareness of predictive early warning tools that can identify imminent and emerging food safety issues, and contribute to the prevention of food safety emergencies, while supporting the development of capacities for their use. 

The report also includes tools (Annex 3) that could be helpful in the prevention of food fraud - we are delighted that our blogs of the JRC's Monthly Food Fraud Reports, presented as visuals (created by our Member Bruno Séchet) gets a mention!.

Access the FAO report here.

In March 2023, Dr Malcolm Burns, Head of the GMO Analytical Unit at the National Measurement Laboratory at LGC presented presented at the International Conference on GMO and New Genomic Techniques on 'Analytical strategies for detection of GMO's and NGT products- status and challenges'. The presentation explored some of the opportunities and challenges for the development of methods for the detection of NGT products.

You can now view Malcolm's presentation here.         
Note: all information given in the presentation was correct at the time of the presentation in March 2023.

 The UK Government Chemist Annual Review 2022 is published.

The Annual Review is a summary of referee casework, research projects, advice and impact of work carried out by the Government Chemist team during 2022.

Access the review here.