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John Points posted a blog post
In this paper (purchase required, GBP £29.95) the authors present a biosensing platform termed one-pot TLAMP-PfAgo assay (OTPA) that integrates the rapid amplification of turn-back loop primer-accelerated loop-mediated isothermal amplification…
Friday
John Points posted a blog post
Cargo theft, on a large and highly organised scale, is one of the current food fraud watchouts around the world.  The risk has been highlighted by regulatory authorities including the National Food Crime Unit in the UK.
Recent examples have been as…
Thursday
John Points posted a blog post
The latest consultation period on Codex’s draft food fraud guidelines closed at the end of August, and it now seems likely that they will be published without substantive change.
At its core is a definition of food fraud.  Wordsmithing a definition…
Wednesday
John Points posted a blog post
Non-targeted testing relies on statistical comparison of test results with an "authentic" database.  Such databases are difficult to construct, highly speciric, and usually held by an individual organisation.  
FAN curate a "database of databases",…
Aug 29
John Points posted a blog post
Stable carbon isotope ratio analysis of isolated honey protein is one of the standard panel of methods for authenticity assessment. However, conventional protein precipitation protocols rely on sulphuric acid, which risks acid catalyzed degradation…
Aug 28
John Points posted a blog post
This qualitative research paper (purchase required, GBP £13) explores one significant incident of food fraud in Nigeria.  It deals with the vulnerabilities that led to the fraud, the regulatory response, and the economic and trade consequences.  The…
Aug 26
John Points posted a blog post
This work (purchase required, USD$35.95) presents an algorithm to transform the LC-MS spectra of one instrument, to make it appear as though it came from another instrument. This allows a machine learning model trained on one set of samples using…
Aug 24
John Points posted blog posts
Aug 23
John Points posted a blog post
Food consultancy company The Acheson Group (TAG) have blogged about the current risk of corporate "identity theft" scams in the US food industry.  You can read the full blog here.  TAG provide generic mitigation advice in their blog, and promote…
Aug 6
John Points posted blog posts
Aug 5
John Points posted a blog post
Agavins are a mixture of polysaccharides of various chain lengths, extracted from agave, which are gaining increasing popularity as prebiotic food supplements.  Their global market is booming.
In this survey (open access) researchers tested 12…
Aug 4
John Points commented on John Points's blog post EU Agrifood Suspicions Report - June 2026 - FAN 3-month rolling analysis
"Thanks Sarah.  Good to hear from you - I had forgotten you were a member. 
It gets shared with UK policy-makers - FSA are a platinum FAN partners, they look at this (and the original reports, plus other insight) - it all feeds into their digital…"
Aug 3
Sarah Howarth commented on John Points's blog post EU Agrifood Suspicions Report - June 2026 - FAN 3-month rolling analysis
"Thank you.
I recommend you share this with the media as the public / political environment is telling the general public import checks are top heavy and a waste of money. It was last week on the Farming program BBC 4 just before 6am I heard this…"
Aug 3
John Points posted a blog post
Rarely, in the many studies verifying olive oil authenticity, is it challenged whether the PDO regulatory specifications used as authentication benchmarks are still valid.
This review (open access) examines and challenges the topic.  The authors…
Aug 3
John Points posted a blog post
The Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) of the United Nations & World Health Organisation have relaunched the promotion of their database of GM foods.
This public database is primarily intended as a search-tool for safety assessments of authorised GM…
Jul 31
John Points posted a blog post
This monthly highlights report has been produced for FAN members by one of our Partner organisations, iComplai.
The report is an AI-generated prioritised digest.  It is blended from online regulatory and media reports of food fraud incidents and…
Jul 30
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