Selvarani Elahi's Posts (349)
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Food Standards Agency Chair Heather Hancock has announced the appointment of a Chair and seven members to the Agency’s new Science Council. The Council will provide high-level, expert and independent advice and challenge to the Agency on how it uses science to underpin its work.
Professor Sandy Thomas will Chair the Council. Professor Thomas is Director of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition and an Honorary Professor at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. She has extensive experience of leading, convening and generating cross-disciplinary analysis and strategic science to inform policy; and was Head of the UK Government’s Foresight Programme from 2007 to 2015.
The seven newly appointed members of the Council are: Professor Laura Green, Professor John O’Brien, Professor Sarah O’Brien, Mr Mark Rolfe, Dr Paul Turner, Professor Patrick Wolfe and Professor Mark Woolhouse. Mr Rolfe has been appointed to the role of Member bringing insights on the public’s perspectives.
In the recent survey, conducted by the Food and Drug Administration Department of India under the milk survey of Food Safety and Standard Authority, the apex regulatory body to ensure food standards and quality in the country, 25 per cent of milk samples failed the quality check.
These samples were not only taken from dairies but also from milk packets.
“Under the survey, conducted by the FSSAI across the nation, we have collected 45 samples from various dairies and packaging units of the city. Over 10 samples have failed to clear the quality test including four contain sodium bicarbonate,” senior food safety officer Manish Swami said.
He said that samples of Mahindra Saboro, the packaged milk launched by Mahindra and Mahindra, were also failed as they contain sodium bicarbonate. “Samples of Saboro were also failed and many of the samples contain more water. Milk samples were also found to contain a neutraliser (sodium bicarbonate or sodium hydroxide) to increase the shelf life of milk. Many samples had fat content lower than what was prescribed by the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954 (PFA),” he added.
However, samples taken from rural areas were found even better than the set standards in terms of fat content and quality. Swami said that they would serve notices to the adulterators and also send our report to the FSSAI.
The vast majority of wasabi consumed in America is simply a mix of horseradish, hot mustard, and green dye, according to a new video from the American Chemical Society.
In fact, about 99% of all wasabi sold in the US is fake, The Washington Post reports.
Even in Japan where most wasabi is grown, you won't have much better luck. Experts estimate that about 95% of wasabi sold in the country is an imitation.
True wasabi is difficult to grow and extraordinarily expensive, costing $160 a kilogram at wholesale prices.
Vulnerability of the food supply chain is one of the hottest topics in the international food industry. Those vulnerabilities are not limited to breaches of physical security, theft and malicious contamination by ideologues, extortionists, criminals or terrorists.
In this whitepaper, Ti’s CEO, Professor John Manners-Bell, and Managing Director, RQA Group, Vince Shiers Ph.D., offer insight into the vulnerability of the food supply chain by highlighting the threats and offering analysis of the best practice for securing the supply chain.
In 2017 MoniQA Association (Monitoring and Quality Assurance in the total food supply chain) www.moniqa.org will highlight emerging issues related to 1) food authenticity and food fraud prevention and 2) food allergens and effective food allergen management. Starting with various task force meetings (25 January 2017) and an international symposium on Food Fraud Prevention and Effective Food Allergen Management 26 + 27 January 2017 http://bari2017.moniqa.org/ the MoniQA Global Food Safety Network again will strengthen its involvement in collaborative research projects, providing validated reference materials (especially for food allergen analysis), developing harmonized protocols, offering validated information and online tools and databases, as well as providing training and continuous professional development. The top 5 priorities for 2017 will include food authenticity, food allergens, antimicrobial resistance, processing and chemical contaminants (including mycotoxins), and microbiological contaminants.
Food Quality News has published an article that highlights the cases referred to the Government Chemist in 2015 which included novel investigations, familiar issues and re-emerging questions. The most challenging investigations involved alleged allergens in spices, for which the GC had to develop completely new methods of analysis. Familiar issues included aflatoxins, naturally occurring cancer causing contaminants; and there were also issues to resolve relating to pesticides residues, food authenticity, and residues of veterinary medicines. Two issues resurfaced after gaps of several years; illegal dyes and the choking hazards of jelly mini-cups.
Focus on food authenticity remained high in 2015. The FSA funded 2014-15 National Sampling Programme included an additional element of local authority testing of lamb dishes from takeaway restaurants for meat speciation (and where appropriate for allergens and additives). There were over 60 samples considered to be non-compliant when sampled by a local authority from the restaurant and its suppliers which needed following up.
The Public Analyst reported one lamb sample as satisfactory, however a product described as goat meat was reported to contain only sheep DNA. Moreover the Public Analyst also reported a minced lamb product with a substantial amount of chicken DNA, a “cooked lamb curry” with only beef DNA and a sample described as “cooked minced lamb” was found to contain chicken DNA as well as sheep DNA. Proceedings were instigated in the Magistrate’s Court and the defendant supplier entered a ‘not guilty’ plea. Anticipating a possible analytical defence the local authority requested a referee analysis of the retained portions of the samples.
The GC applied both ELISA (to check the protein) and real time PCR (to identify cell nucleus DNA) to multiple replicates of the samples. The “cooked lamb curry”, consisted of seven pieces of cooked meat and some sauce. The GC tested multiple replicates of each piece of meat (and the sauce) individually and showed that the meat was beef and not sheep meat. The “goat meat”, also consisted of seven pieces of raw meat and similar detailed analysis confirmed that the meat was sheep and not goat. The GC found the “cooked minced lamb” to consist of a mixture of chicken and sheep meat, and the “minced lamb”, consisted of a mixture of sheep and chicken meat.
Hence the GC upheld all of the Public Analyst’s findings and the defendant was found guilty and received a total penalty (fines and costs) of £7100.
Read full article and the Government Chemist Annual Review for 2015.
The FFD 2.0 version can identify trends and risks using a custom dashboard, which will alert users to new food fraud incidents and track ingredients of concern. The result is meant to allow users to stay on top of the economically motivated adulteration of food products, wherever they may occur.
FFD 2.0 also contains incident reports, surveillance records and analytical methods gathered from scientific journals, media publications, regulatory records, judicial records and trade associations around the world in addition to thousands of ingredients and related adulterants.
The Sage Project is an initiative by designer and developer Sam Slover. The idea is to create food ingredient labels in the cloud, which can be accessed on the web or via a mobile app (the web version is now live and the mobile apps are coming soon, according to Slover). (You can listen to an interview with Slover here.)
Sage gets food information mainly from the manufacturers. Interestingly, Slover said companies were initially reluctant to provide the information but recently have been clamoring to do so. Separately, the food industry is reportedly discovering that unless food companies provide ingredient information, the public will seek it out from more reliable sources offering more transparency.
Sage lists food types (for example, "mandarin oranges") and food products (such as Theo Chocolate's Organic Fair Trade Orange (70%) Dark Chocolate Bar) in its nearly 20,000-item food database.
Copies of the presentations from the Government Chemist conference (21 - 22 June 2016) are now available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/science-supporting-trust-in-food-conference-presentations.
Authenticate is a cloud based technology platform, developed by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and the Seasoning and Spices Association (SSA) in liaison with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS), which provides companies with a tool to help combat food fraud in herbs and spices.
Basic Membership to the Authenticate system is free.
The National Food Crime Unit has today launched Food Crime Confidential. This is a reporting facility where anyone with suspicions about food crime can report them safely and in confidence, over the phone or through email. The facility is particularly targeted at those working in or around the UK food industry.
The FSA’s National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) works with partners to protect people from serious criminal activity that impacts the safety or authenticity of food and drink they consume.
Food crime involves dishonesty at any stage in the production or supply of food. It is often complex and likely to be seriously detrimental to consumers, businesses or the general public interest.
NFCU would like to receive any information relating to suspected dishonesty involving food, drink or animal feed. In addition to identifying and being able to tackle specific instances of food crime, such information will help us learn more about the circumstances that make offending possible.
