Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database, owned and operated by Decernis, a Food Safety Tech advertiser. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne
Fraudulent alcoholic beverages often carry health risks for consumers, since counterfeit products may contain contaminants such as methanol, chloroform, isopropanol and more, leading to kidney and liver problems, blindness and sometimes death. A store owner in the UK was fined for selling counterfeit vodka under the label of a famous Scottish distillery. The Foods Standards Agency is taking these (rare) cases of counterfeit alcohol in the UK extremely seriously due to the potentially serious health impact on consumers.
Susanne Kuehne joined Decernis in 2016 as senior manager, business development. She has 20+ years of experience in the chemicals, plastics, coatings and beverage spaces. Kuehne is located at the Washington, D.C. office, but is originally from the Stuttgart, Germany area. She studied chemistry and business in Germany, then worked for Grace GmbH in Worms, Germany before moving to the United States in 2000. She worked for Grace in the United States before joining the beverage industry for eight years. Kuehne’s focus is food contact and chemical industry clients world-wide, across the multiple disciplines Decernis covers.
Kuehne holds a Dipl.-Ing (FH) Farbe/Chemie from Fachhochschule fuer Druck, Stuttgart, and a Dipl.-Betriebswirt (FH) from AKAD Fachhochschule, Lahr.
