Food Fraud Quick Bites

Food Fraud and the Case for Traceability

By Johnna Hepner, Jon Woody
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Food fraud isn’t new. What’s changed is our awareness of it. At its core, food fraud is the intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of a food or ingredient for economic gain. The drivers haven’t changed much: high-value ingredients, complex global supply chains with more intermediaries than most people realize, price volatility from tariffs or natural disasters, and food safety standards that vary from country to country. Put those together and food fraud is going to keep happening. The question is how well food and beverage companies understand where they’re vulnerable and what they’re doing to reduce that risk.

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Food fraud, gin, ingredients, botanicals
Food fraud, gin, ingredients, botanicals
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Resolving mismatches in botanical purchasing documents

By Dr. Chirag Patel
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A botanical sample can arrive with a promising appearance and a complete-looking document pack, yet still leave a basic purchasing question unanswered: do these records describe the same material? A specification may name one plant part, the sample label another, while the certificate of analysis refers to a batch that is not available for supply. Resolving those discrepancies before purchasing requires a traceable decision process, not simply a cleaner set of PDFs.

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Microscope, pepper
Microscope, pepper
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Authentic Food, Safer Shelves: How Testing Prevents Fraud

By Baidini Ghosh
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Food fraud, driven primarily by economic gain, can rapidly escalate from quality concerns into serious public health crises when adulteration goes undetected. Modern analytical technologies such as spectroscopy, chromatography, mass spectrometry, and PCR are effective tools to authenticate ingredients and detect adulteration before products reach consumers. This article highlights that food fraud prevention is most effective at the ingredient level and explores practical applications, cost considerations, and implementation strategies for building a safer and more transparent food system.

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Food Fraud Quick Bites

The Cascading Food Safety Risks from Tariffs on the Food Industry

By Benjamin Miller, Ph.D., MPH
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As food companies move away from expensive imports, domestic growers and manufacturers may experience demand surges, creating a fundamental safety challenge where production pressures increase faster than the food safety infrastructure. Increased Capacity Leads to Increase Risks. Food Fraud, Supply Chain, Traceability and Recording Keeping Concerns. In these uncertain times, navigating the complex intersection of international trade policy and food safety requires specialized expertise that combines regulatory knowledge, technical assessment capabilities, and strategic planning.

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