Melody Ge
Women in Food Safety

When We Work Harder Together, the Sky’s the Limit

By Melody Ge
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Melody Ge

John Carter, area Europe quality director at Ferrero, has been devoted to diversity for more than 20 years. This time, it’s our pleasure to speak with him to hear his perspective on female professionals in the industry and how his male peers can help encourage a diverse environment and break unconscious bias.

His background in engineering, along with an MBA, has given him a scientific mindset when making decisions. After his first job with Campden BRI in the UK, John had positions at Kraft/Mondelez, Metro, Danone, and is now at Ferrero; in that time, he has gained tremendous food safety and quality experience. As is the case with many food safety professionals, John is proud to be part of an industry where he can use his technical knowledge to protect public health. “Food safety is not competitive; it’s a global collaboration, and a rewarding field,” he said.

John Carter, Ferrero
John Carter, area Europe quality director at Ferrero

John advises young professionals to avoid limiting themselves to one function. Explore different functions within a business; if you have been working within food safety for more than 20 years, you might not focus on the full scope of the food industry or food operations. To move forward into an advanced position, especially toward a senior management position, John explained that one should have a helicopter view of the business and vision. For example, moving from food safety to the quality management system, to operations is one option, allowing you to see the big picture. “Don’t hesitate to explore other functions. At Kraft, we used to say that to be a senior executive, you need to do 2, 2, and 2, meaning you need to do two countries, two categories, and two functions. Afterward, you can say you know the company,” he said.

In the future, John hopes to see at least a 50-50 ratio of male-to-female professionals, or an even higher ratio of females.

Melody Ge: What is your most important piece of advice to aspiring—as well as current—food safety professionals?

John Carter: Walk the line and find the balance. To illustrate my point, I’ll tell a story about my experience at one company involving a recall of raw milk cheese due to positive E. coli 0157. It was quite a significant issue, but no one got sick, and we had the products withdrawn from the market. One of the questions we had at that time was why we were selling raw milk cheese. Why don’t we just use pasteurized milk and cheeses? However, the reality is that, in Europe, raw milk cheese is in the DNA of some countries. It would be hard to even think about their diet without raw milk cheese. So there must be another way to manage food safety apart from just pasteurizing the milk. How do you do it? What else can you do? Where are the risks? We, as food safety professionals, must answer these questions. So walking the line between the commercial impact and the risk is crucial. Hence, the skill of the job is to know how to make the decision properly. It’s very easy to say ‘no’ to everything, but it might not be business friendly.

What’s more important is to say ‘yes’ after a thorough risk assessment—for example, ‘yes but…’ or ‘yes with a condition of …’ Every day, we are confronting this issue. The skill in food safety and quality is to give these conditional yesses. It’s based on a logical, scientific and rational assessment of risks. The partnership with the business is that they see us as an enabling function rather than a blocking function.

Ge: Let’s focus on female professionals—any particular pieces of advice for them?

Carter: Be confident! Between men and women, there is this confidence vs. competency conundrum. Typically, men behave more confidently. ‘Can you do this? Yeah, sure!’; in contrast, for women, ‘Can you do this? Oh, well let me check, I am not sure.’ They may have the same level of competence, and maybe even the women are more competent (it’s the reality). I read a book recently called Why Men Win at Work by Gill Whitty-Collins. Gill also mentioned this in her book: We shouldn’t expect men to be less confident; we should encourage women to be more confident. (On the other hand, if I look at the women in my team, typically their competency is very high!)
The other thing is to be who you are, and keep up the competency. I will use emotional behavior as an example. A female quality manager who reported to me once was criticized by a senior colleague (a male) for being too emotional. I am more critical of the colleague, not the quality manager, because I think we as male managers need to understand emotional behavior instead of removing that behavior. She is emotional for a reason. A man’s way of dealing with that emotion might be to get angry, while a woman’s way might be to shed some tears. But the root cause is the same issue and has the same action plan. Thus, it’s important to get over the differences and manage her talent—and not label it, showing this kind of emotion as a weakness. For example, I would like to believe that crying is not the point; it’s a different way of dealing with stressful situations. You need to look for the root cause of the stress and address the stress, not judge the symptoms.

Ge: Do you believe in a glass ceiling for female professionals?

Carter: I was fortunate that I had an excellent female boss at Kraft. She believed that we needed 50/50 gender equality—that 50% of plant managers should be female, 50% of country managers should be female, etc. I had a good experience at Kraft in developing and seeing many female professionals thrive. In that specific environment, I wouldn’t agree that there was a glass ceiling for females; however, I see it elsewhere for sure. In other companies, I have been thinking about how we can get more females in director levels. It is not easy to just promote at the management level because it has to be a structural change. The system change must happen. Part of what I am trying to do right now throughout my career is address the structural problem. And senior men need to be part of the solution.

On the other hand, there are many aspects to a promotion. One needs to be good, really resilient and lucky. Luck is essential, and the right time and place are important. If you are good enough and you have been overlooked, then maybe you should go somewhere else (It is that simple). I think, in today’s world, the opportunities are there, and the recognition is there. It is the right timing now to break the ceiling. Every company I have ever worked in has started to change, so now is a good time to be in that situation.

Ge: Can you share a story that has impacted you and still inspires you today?

Carter: I remember meeting someone at Kraft, and she was doing something related to IT at that time. She was managing something related to complaints and was in a position where she got to know the quality function in the company. When we had an open role internally for a quality auditor, she applied for it. I was quite surprised when she came to me, because she was not qualified from a technical perspective. But when she told me she was interested, it inspired me. I assigned her to the factory in South Africa for training, and suddenly, she moved from a desk in Munich to a factory floor to deal with the operations and team in South Africa. Of course, the factory environment is challenging, and there is no easy factory. However, she was very talented and really loved it. (It could have gone the other way, but she nailed it). Then, she returned from this assignment and became a QA manager, eventually overseeing the whole SAP QA system. Of course, this is because of her background in the IT department before the QA training. Suddenly, she had this kind of unique knowledge of something, and no one understood the computer system or QA better than her. If she hadn’t come to me in need of a change, and if I hadn’t been inspired to provide a chance to an enthusiastic person, her path may have been different. So, go for it! Once the tough times pass, you will enjoy it, and then the sky is the limit.

Ge: What’s your opinion on unconscious bias?

Carter: I am pretty excited about this topic—I think it addresses the root cause of many issues. I have been working on diversity for the last 20 years; but only over the past couple of years have I started thinking about unconscious bias. The unconscious bias part is relatively new, but I think it may help us address the root cause of many of the behavior issues that we see in today’s world. Gill also mentioned this in her book. She was a senior vice president at P&G, and until she noticed unconscious bias, she was quite happy. So, this happens to females as well as to men. You suddenly see it, and then you see it everywhere.

I can give you another example of my own. Not so long ago, in one of the companies where I have worked, there was an internal announcement about senior leadership changes. When it was announced, I saw a list of 20 names on the screen and didn’t notice that they were all men until our diversity council had a meeting to discuss this issue. The council leader pointed out that we have zero female representatives among the twenty. Wow, I was shocked! I am a man and I genuinely care about diversity, yet my unconscious bias is that I didn’t even notice that there wasn’t a female name on the list. I had to reflect. With this unconscious bias, which we can all have, we need to work harder together.

I think there is a food safety parallel: perhaps the situation is a lot like when we first addressed food fraud at the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Food fraud is a crime, and it’s possibly the oldest crime in the food industry—centuries old. Although legislation has been in place for years, it seemed that little concrete had been done about it; but after the melamine crisis in China, and various similar issues, we finally got a political imperative to address it in a systematic way. We now have GFSI guidance documents and CPOs, and we have the technology with DNA testing to guarantee authenticity. Finally, we have the tools and political will to ‘do something’ and really address the issue.

So, coming back to this topic of diversity and unconscious bias – in my opinion, this is the “food fraud” of society; it has been ongoing for a long time, and now is the time for us to make a change. We have to ‘do something’. Every company and culture has its own issues and characteristics and all cultures are different (diverse, right?) but when you have the willingness and tools to change an environment, you can take a series of steps to make that change. The time is right, but having awareness comes first.

Ge: Any last bits of advice for our WIFS group members?

Carter: I read a little book about 40 years ago, and the book’s thesis was that there are two things you need to do and have in life. One is that you need to have fun and enjoy life; the other is to learn as much as possible. In the course of mentoring many talented folks over the years, I have added two other things to this list; have patience and courage.

Patience, courage, learning, and fun! Try to live your life with those things in mind.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Juicy Fraud Case Revealed

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Orange slice, food fraud
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

“Carbon Content of the C3 Cycle” is the method of choice used by the laboratories of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply in Brazil to identify exogenous sugar in juices. In a recent operation, 173,000 liters of juices and coconut water adulterated with 30% added sugars and water were discovered. The fraudulent products were seized and rendered unusable, and large fines are awaiting the offenders. The C3 photosynthetic cycle method has traditionally been used to detect added sugars in the winemaking process.

Resource

  1. Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento. (July 30, 2021). “Ação de fiscalização do Mapa apreende 173 mil litros de bebidas com indícios de fraude”.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Plant A Seed For Real Pomegranate

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Pomegranate
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

The Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program published a bulletin on the adulteration of pomegranate, with descriptions on methods on adulteration detection. Pomegranate fruit, juice, bark, extract and oil from seeds is believed to have anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antioxidant and even anti-tumor properties, and more. Over the past two decades, increasing demand for pomegranate products has instigated a wave of fraudulent activities. Added polyphenols, anthocyanins, sugar, other juices, water and ellagic acid are used as adulterants.

Resource

  1. Cardellina, J.H. and Gafner, S. (August 24, 2021). “Adulteration of Pomegranate Ingredients and Products”. Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program.
Anthony Macherone, Agilent
FST Soapbox

The Link Between Exposure to Xenobiotic Pesticides and Declining Honeybee Colonies and Honey

By Anthony Macherone, Ph.D.
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Anthony Macherone, Agilent

According to data from the Bee Informed Partnership, a national collaboration of leading research labs and universities in agricultural science, managed honeybee populations declined by nearly 40% between Oct. 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019. This is a 7% greater decline compared to the same timeframe during the previous winter.1

Scientists are examining different environmental factors such as the increased use of pesticides and the use of chemicals in agriculture as causes for the rapid decline in global honeybee numbers.

Recent research conducted by my team and I revealed a potentially key reason for the decline in honeybee populations as a result of Nosema ceranae (N. ceranae), a prevalent infection in adult honeybee populations. My team established a link between N. ceranae-infected honeybee colonies and changes in pheromone levels, which in turn, may have a social impact on communication in honeybee colonies.

Moreover, the significant decline in the global honeybee population is likely to be driving an increase in fraudulent honey, meaning that both governments and regulators need to invest in the latest technology to test honey products for authenticity, nutritional values and safety.

The Significance of Honey in Our Global Diet and the Problem at Hand

Honey has been a part of our diet for the past 8,000 years, and with numerous health benefits in addition to having a favorable taste, it is one of the most popular foods across the globe.2

Honeybees produce honey from the nectar of flowering plants, and they are considered a “keystone species” since one-third of human food supply depends on pollination by honeybees.3The species is responsible for pollinating numerous fruit, nut, vegetable and field crops such as apples, almonds, onions and cotton.

The increase of pesticides and chemicals in the environment has been cited as a reason for the decline in bee populations, which has occurred in Western European countries such as France, Belgium, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as countries such as the United States, Russia and Brazil.4 In fact, the number of honeybee colonies in Europe fell by an average of 16 per cent over the winter of 2017–2018, according to findings published in the Journal of Apiculture Research.5

Global pesticide usage was predicted to increase to 3.5 million tons globally in 2020, which could mean that honeybee populations will continue to diminish at an exponential rate due to the increased use of pesticides.6

The Impact of Pesticides on Global Honeybee Populations

In 2019, a research project was initiated to explore the link between exposure to xenobiotic pesticides and increasing susceptibility to the N. ceranae infection in honeybee colonies, one of the most common infections in adult honeybee populations. The findings suggested that it is not the amount of pesticide exposure, nor a particular kind of pesticide exposure, but rather the number of exposure events from different xenobiotics that is associated with N. ceranae, which infected hives, thereby causing them to diminish.7

For discovery-based (non-targeted) exposome profiling of honeybee extracts, a gas chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer (GC/Q-TOF) was used. Additionally, spectral library searches and compound annotation were performed using the NIST 14, RTL Pesticides and the Fiehn Metabolomics libraries to provide efficient and timely research outputs.8

Expanding on this research further in 2021, a scientist’s team established a link between N. ceranae-infected honeybee colonies and changes in pheromone levels, which showed a potential impact on social communication in honeybee colonies. While it was concluded that further analysis is required, as research points to the real possibility that N. ceranae-infected honeybee colonies show increased alarm pheromones and may affect hive communication, which could ultimately, be a reason for the collapse of colonies.9

As N. ceranae is causing honeybee populations to dwindle worldwide, the decline in ‘real’ honey supplies is correspondent with an increase in ‘fake’ honey. Inauthentic honey products cause businesses and consumers to lose out, as ‘fake’ honey floods the market and makes producing ‘real’ honey more expensive.

Growth in Fake Honey

The global honey market has grown from 1.5 million tons produced annually in 2007 to more than 1.9 million tons in 2019 and the market is estimated to be worth $7 billion, however the decline in bee populations has led to an increase in honey adulteration to fill the global demand for honey.10

Declining supplies of authentic honey combined with the strong consumer demand for honey has driven significant adulteration of this product. Honey is considered to be one of the most adulterated foods after milk and olive oil, with every seventh jar of honey opened daily around the globe thought to be fake.11, 12 Consequently, legitimate honeybee keepers and business owners are forced to slash costs, which is problematic for those who depend on selling authentic honey.

To put into perspective the scale of the issue, the European agricultural organization, Copa-Cogeca noted that most honey imported from China into Europe is mixed with syrup.13 In 2018, the Honey Authenticity Project in Mexico commissioned tests for British supermarket honey products, and 10 out of 11 products failed the tests due to suspected sugar adulteration.14

While in the United States, it was recently reported that thousands of commercial beekeepers have taken legal action against the country’s largest honey importers and packers for allegedly flooding the market with hundreds of thousands of tons of “fake” honey.15 Furthermore, a recent workshop led by the South Africa Bee Industry Organization (SABIO) also conducted research on the impact of fraudulent honey, and the organization found that honey imports into South Africa have tripled to 6,000 tons a year, 60% of which come from China.16 As the demand for honey products stays robust but authentic honey supplies dwindle, the issue of counterfeit honey will continue to worsen.

Testing Methods to Identify Authentication

The issue of fraudulent food products like honey has driven governments to set up laws and departments dedicated to food integrity. Examples include FSMA, the UK National Food Crime Unit, Chinese Food Safety Law, and European Commission Food Integrity Project.

Food retailers often have contractual agreements with suppliers that require them to carry out authenticity testing of their ingredients, which can be carried out by third-party laboratories.17 Food adulteration can be identified via targeted and non-targeted testing and common testing methods include molecular spectroscopy solutions for ‘in the field’ screening and more in-depth laboratory analysis to determine quantities of ingredients.

Analytical instrument manufacturers have been working closely with governments to provide the latest methods to test the authenticity of honey products, as well as working with the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists (AOAC) on the development of both targeted and non-targeted standards for authenticity testing in milk, honey and olive oil.
Measuring contaminants is a key solution to identifying counterfeit honey and gas chromatographs are able to analyze and quantify the absence or presence of hundreds of pesticides in organic-labeled honey.18

Testing and analysis can be done using a range of analytical instrumentation such as solid phase microextraction followed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS), inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), and gas/liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight (GC/Q-TOF and LC/Q-TOF). These instruments can be coupled with innovative software solutions for advanced data analysis.19

Future Research Must Continue

The spread of diseases such as N. ceranae, which have been shown to be aggravated by human-induced environmental factors, are decimating global honeybee populations, which in turn is negatively impacting ecosystems and humans, and the availability of authentic honey. This demise in authentic honey supplies is additionally fueling a rise in fake honey products, where consumers are misled into buying counterfeit honey.

Future research must continue to seek associations with environmental exposures effects on biological pathways and adverse health outcomes in honeybee populations, and in fact, novel environmental exposures have been found to be associated with seven of the top diseases known to affect honeybees. These putative associations must be validated with targeted follow-up studies to determine if they are causative factors in the decline of honeybee populations. If proven to be causative, scientists and policy makers can work together to mitigate these factors and hopefully reverse the global trend of honeybee colony decline.

References

  1. Loss & Management Survey, Bee Informed. Last accessed: June 2021
  2. Agilent.‘The Buzz around Fake Honey’. 2018. Last accessed: June 2021
  3. University of California – Berkeley. ‘Pollinators Help One-third Of The World’s Food Crop Production’. 2006. Last accessed: June 2021
  4. European Parliament. ‘What’s behind the decline in bees and other pollinators?’. 2021. Last accessed: June 2021
  5. Journal of Apiculture Research. ‘Loss rates of honeybee colonies during winter 2017/18 in 36 countries participating in the COLOSS survey, including effects of forage sources’. 2019. Last accessed: June 2021
  6. SN Applied Sciences. ‘Worldwide pesticide usage and its impacts on ecosystem’. 2019. Last accessed: June 2021
  7. PLOS ONE. ‘Honey bee (Apis mellifera) exposomes and dysregulated metabolic pathways associated with Nosema ceranae infection’. 2019. Last accessed: June 2021
  8. PLOS ONE. ‘Honey bee (Apis mellifera) exposomes and dysregulated metabolic pathways associated with Nosema ceranae infection’. 2019. Last accessed: June 2021.
  9. Royal Society Open Science. ‘Increased alarm pheromone component is associated with Nosema ceranae infected honeybee colonies’. 2021. Last accessed: June 2021
  10. Statista. ‘Global market value of honey 2019-2027’. 2021. Last accessed: June 2021
  11. Insider.com. ‘Honey is one of the most faked foods in the world, and the US government isn’t doing much to fix it.’ 2020. Last accessed: June 2021
  12. Dow Jones. ‘Hi honey. I’m not from home.’ Last accessed: June 2021
  13. Apiservices.biz. ‘Copa-Cogeca Position Paper on the European Honey Market.’ February 2020. Available at: Copa-Cogeca position paper on the European honey market (apiservices.biz)
  14.  WIRED. ‘The honey detectives are closing in on China’s shady syrup swindlers’. 2021. Last accessed: June 2021
  15.  The Guardian. ‘US beekeepers sue over imports of Asian fake honey’. 2021. Last accessed: June 2021
  16.  Times Live. ‘Falsely labelled, mixed with syrup or ‘laundered’: Honey fraud is rife in SA’. 2021. Last accessed: June 2021.
  17.  UK Parliament Post. Postnote, number 624. ‘Food Fraud’. Last accessed: June 2021
  18. Agilent. ‘The Health Benefits of Honey’. 2017. Last accessed: June 2021
  19. Agilent. ‘Protecting our honey against food adulteration’. Last accessed: June 2021.

 

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Today’s Pig Is Tomorrow’s…Beef?

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Pig, cow, food fraud
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

Balkan countries are enduring their share of adulterated foods. In Kosovo, commercial samples of meat labelled as beef or chicken were investigated with ELISA (enzyme-linked immunoassay test) and PCR (polymerase chain reaction) in order to detect pork mitochondrial DNA. The test series looked into the efficiency and cost of different methods and showed a preference for commercial ELISA combined with real-time PCR. Almost a third of beef was adulterated with pork, as were 8% of the chicken samples.

Resource

  1. Gecaj, R.M., et al. (August 2021). “Investigation of pork meat in chicken and beef based commercial products by ELISA and real-time PCR sold at retail in Kosovo”. Czech Academy of Agricultural Science, Open Access CAAS Agricultural Journals.
Jill Stuber, The Food Safety Coach
FST Soapbox

Move the Needle on Food Safety Culture Starting with Your FSQ Team

By Jill Stuber
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Jill Stuber, The Food Safety Coach

“Yeah, yeah, I know. We’re supposed to have FSQ (Food Safety and Quality) verify the line before we start. But c’mon, we could see the plastic so we just removed it and then we visually inspected all the product on that part of the line. We looked everywhere for the other missing piece. We didn’t find it, so somebody probably found it not knowing what it was and tossed it out. We radioed for someone for FSQ about five minutes ago and no one came. We did what we needed: Stopped the line, found the foreign material, and now we’re running again. We only have an hour of production left and we’re almost done filling this order.”

As the operations supervisor was telling me this, I could feel my entire body become agitated. My blood began to boil, and I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying unkind and unhelpful words.

It wasn’t the first time we’d had foreign material on that line that week. And to top it off, it was the same supervisor telling me they knew the FSQ Team had to be part of foreign material incidents, yet the supervisor decided the situation wasn’t important enough to follow the written SOP on handling foreign material that we all signed off on earlier in the month in an attempt at streamlining the process to be easier to execute.
I’m not sure what made me angrier—the fact we were having this conversation again or that this type of conversation always got under my skin. How was it I was blowing a gasket while the supervisor thought it was no big deal?

It all seemed to come down to a difference in beliefs. A difference in attitudes. A difference in the actions taken when no one is watching. This situation is showing the food safety culture of the organization, and everyone nearby is seeing it. This isn’t uncommon—these every-day moments are displays of the food safety culture within our organizations. These moments are an opportunity to create a new story around food safety culture.

It begs the question: How do we start to re-write food safety culture in these moments?
To write a new story around food safety culture, many say it needs to start at the top. In fact, GFSI, EU Regulations, and the New Era of Smarter Food Safety focus on top leaders creating the mission, values and key performance metrics around food safety culture. While I believe having top leadership support is important, I’d challenge one to consider: Does food safety culture really have to start at the top?

In 1989, Sidney Yoshida unveiled the concept of the “Iceberg of Ignorance” that found large knowledge gaps between senior management and the rest of the organization.1 Yoshida’s research concluded that top leaders are too far removed from the day-to-day operations, which limits them to only see the very tip of a problem, meaning most of the problem isn’t visible to them. When we consider Yoshida’s concept for food safety culture, one may conclude top leaders are unlikely to fully understand the frustration, depth and frequency of stories like the one illustrated above.

Then who is positioned to understand the issues around food safety culture and make a difference? After working with multiple teams across multiple companies in food safety and quality for more than 25 years, I can confidently say, no one wants to see food safety practices and systems working more effectively than the FSQ Team!

FSQ Teams see first-hand the effect of failures in the food safety and quality systems that plague companies through things like product on hold, downtime and customer complaints, as they are often the ones involved with resolving issues. That’s why they are perfectly positioned to make a meaningful, daily impact on how people understand, perceive and embrace food safety behaviors.

Keep in mind, each year additional workload falls to the FSQ Team through new customer requirements, new regulations, new certification requirements, and more. That certainly explains how 60% of people have taken on more tasks than they can get done at work causing confusion in job responsibilities.2,3

Before we add another element to the FSQ plate, we need to ensure the FSQ Team is well positioned and energized to model the food safety behaviors that align with the culture we want to see. The following are several practical steps to support this journey:

  1. Evaluate Workload. Given 60% people have taken on more work than they can get done, evaluating workload is the first step to ensure the FSQ Team is ready to carry the food safety culture torch. Effects of overwork can be displayed as things like stress, or being disconnected, along with siloed work and even disconnected goals.4 Those outward appearing signs don’t typically align with the behaviors and attitudes aligned with the food safety culture wanted. A simple step to support alignment in the every-day behaviors and attitudes to support food safety culture is ensuring workloads are appropriate. An easy workload evaluation is to create a list of tasks, and compare it to the number of hours a person is expected to work. Just like production line time, if the workload is greater than available capacity, adjustment may be needed or vice versa.
  2. Provide Clarity around Decision Making Responsibilities. When actual work tasks aren’t clear, team members may also be unsure of where their decision making authority begins and ends – especially when it comes to food safety culture. Clarity comes from being curious, asking questions, and having conversations. For example: Can FSQ Team Members ask other Team Members to change how they’re doing a task to be more food safe? Should they ask the Team Member’s Lead or Supervisor first? Does it depend on the severity of the situation? When the FSQ Team sees behaviors that exemplify food safety culture, how are they able to recognize those fellow Team Members? When there are several options for safe handling of product, what’s the role of the FSQ Team in deciding which option is selected? Every individual will have a different perspective for these questions. Exploring how decisions are made and aligning across functional areas of the company will help FSQ Team Members carry the messaging around expected attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that support the food safety culture at the organization.
  3. Focus on Mindset. In FSQ, we are here to serve: The business, our team, our customers, and others. Showing up with the positive attitude to serve food safety culture can get lost when firefighting and being worried about getting everything done. After your FSQ Team has a clear picture of workload and responsibilities, a mindset around the food safety culture you want to see can be aligned in just a few minutes a day! Stuart Smalley was on to something when he repeatedly said, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me”. This type of mindset training had enumerable benefits for improved confidence, improved relationships, reduced stress, improving company outcomes, and more.5

The dreamy Food Safety Culture state where the inherent beliefs and behaviors that drive food safety are second nature to all team members is within reach. To reach that dream state, your FSQ Team is perfectly positioned at the front line every day to carry the food safety culture message. By taking these three practical steps, you’ll move the needle for taking care of your FSQ Team, which in turn, moves the needle on food safety culture for your organization.

References

  1. Adonix. (January 31, 2020). Uncovering the Iceberg of Ignorance.
  2. Bolden-Barrett, V. (2019). “Workers with overstuffed to-do lists feel overwhelmed, not organized, study shows“. HR DIVE.
  3. Stange, J. (February 6, 2020). 20 Employee Engagement Statistics that Impact Your Business.
  4. Martins, J. (May 21, 2021). Feeling Overworked? Strategies for Individuals and Teams to Regain Balance.
  5. Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Karen Everstine, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Why Is Honey Fraud Such a Problem?

By Karen Everstine, Ph.D., Gina Clapper, Norberto Luis Garcia
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Karen Everstine, Decernis

Honey is a deceptively simple product. According to Codex Alimentarius, it is the “natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature.” The result of this extensive process is a substance that consists primarily of fructose and glucose and, therefore, is prone to adulteration with sugars from other sources. Unlike sugars from other sources, honey contains a variety of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, and other micronutrients, which makes it uniquely valuable.1

Honey is much more expensive to produce than other sugar syrups, particularly those from plants such as corn, rice, sugarcane and sugar beets. As a result, there is a strong economic advantage for replacement of honey with other sugar syrups. Honey consistently rates as one of the top five fraudulent food products based on public sources of data (see Figure 1).

Food Fraud Records
Source: Decernis Food Fraud Database

Testing to ensure honey authenticity is not always straightforward.2 Traditionally, analytical methods could detect C4 sugars (from corn or sugarcane) but not C3 sugars (from rice, wheat or sugar beets). Testing methods have evolved, but there are still many challenges inherent in authenticating a sample of a product labeled as “honey.” One promising area of authentication is based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which is a method that can identify and quantify a large number of substances in a sample. Instead of trying to detect one particular adulterant, this method allows comparison of the results of a sample to a range of verified honey samples for authentication (similar to “fingerprinting”). This makes it a flexible and more powerful method for authentication. However, one of the current challenges with NMR is that large databases of verified results must be built to enable effective fingerprinting of any single honey sample. Given the variety of botanical sources of nectar, geographic locations of honey productions, and various other natural factors, this is a large task.

USP FCC, along with their global network of scientific experts, has two ongoing projects related to honey authenticity. The first is development of a honey identity standard. The purpose of the standard is to provide a set of specifications and methods that can be used to help ensure a product—particularly one with natural variability, such as a juice, cold-pressed oil or honey—is accurately and appropriately represented. The standard is voluntary and intended for use in business-to-business relationships (it is not regulatory in nature). It is flexible enough to allow for the natural variability of the product. The FCC honey standard was posted and available for public comment last year and is anticipated to be published in the Food Chemicals Codex in September 2021. The USP Honey Expert Panel is also developing a food fraud mitigation guidance document specific to honey. The guidance will include a detailed description of the various contributing factors to honey fraud and guidance on developing a fraud mitigation plan specific to honey. It is planned for inclusion in the FCC Forum in 2022.

Honey is incredibly popular as a food and food ingredient, and honeybees are a critical resource for agriculture and ecological health. Therefore, prevention of honey fraud is a particularly important issue for both the food industry and consumers.

References

  1. Ajibola, A., et al. (June 20, 2012). “Nutraceutical values of natural honey and its contribution to human health and wealth”. Nutr Metab.
  2. Garcia, N. and Schwarzinger, S. (2021). “Food Fraud: A Global Threat With Public Health and Economic Consequences”. Chapter 15 – Honey Fraud. P. 309-334.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Don’t Open That Sesame

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis

Sesame oil is a popular edible oil in China, with fraudulent sesame oil on the rise. The Chinese government released new guidelines to protect consumers from sesame oil fraud. Consumers are strongly advised to carefully check the nutrition label, purchase from reliable sources and not from unauthorized small vendors, be cautious when purchasing sesame oil online, and investigate the oil’s properties such as color and smell.

Sesame plant
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

Resource

  1. Neo, P. (August 23, 2021) “Food oil fraud: China issues warning about adulterated and blended sesame oils”. Food Navigator-Asia.
Katie Banaszewski, NOW Foods
In the Food Lab

Making Supplements Safer: Tackling the Pesticide Problem

By Katie Banaszewski
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Katie Banaszewski, NOW Foods

Precise, accurate contaminant analysis is crucial to ensure that dietary supplements are of high quality and free from potentially harmful chemicals, such as heavy metals or pesticide residues. As supplements become an increasingly prevalent part of global health culture, with their global market forecast to reach a value of more than $230 billion by 2027, there is an urgent need to ensure their safety for consumers—but manufacturers face many challenges in this area.

Assuring that dietary supplements are free of pesticide contamination is especially difficult given their botanical ingredients, which can be more complex than other analytes. A prominent obstacle is matrix interference. As most botanical ingredients exist in the form of concentrated extracts, smaller sample sizes are needed to overcome heavy matrix interference, in turn requiring highly sensitive instrumentation to detect minute amounts of pesticide residues.

With this in mind, we adopted an analytical workflow comprising both gas and liquid chromatography (GC and LC) systems for orthogonal residue analysis. GC-MS/MS can achieve fast, robust separation of ~300 pesticide residues, while LC-MS/MS enables analysis of ~280 residues. The GC and LC instruments are sufficiently sensitive to allow dilution of samples to mitigate matrix interference— essential to determine potentially low residue levels in complex matrices, and ensure dietary supplements can confidently be certified safe.

Clearing Analytical Hurdles

Matrix complexity is only increased by the fact that botanical ingredients are sourced from across the world and, therefore, exposed to many different agricultural practices. As a wide range and great many of these botanical ingredients are used to produce supplements, it is challenging to develop sample preparation procedures that are suitable for all products.

To prevent frequent iterations of analytical procedures, we developed one sample preparation workflow for GC-MS/MS and another for LC-MS/MS. In both, samples are hydrated and extracted (using acetonitrile:water and the salts anhydrous magnesium sulfate and sodium chloride) before cleanup by solid-phase extraction (SPE). For LC, various defined combinations of dispersive SPE analysis are used to accommodate different matrices (pigmented, high-fat or high-protein, for example) before samples are diluted prior to analysis. Doing so allows us to optimize sample preparation for particular groups of botanical matrices and target specific matrix mitigation without needing to change the entire workflow.

In addition to the aforementioned analytical hurdles, some lesser-defined commodities lack maximum residue limits, complicating the interpretation of results and specification of acceptable criteria. To mitigate these difficulties, we opted to streamline our data processing and reporting by implementing integrated chromatography data system software for both LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS. This enables on-the-spot evaluation of QC criteria and rapid assessment of component presence (or absence) in data review and facilitates swifter and easier cGMP compliance.

Keeping Supplements Safe

Our chosen analytical approach has created robust, sensitive processes for optimized multi-residue analysis of dietary supplement samples in a regulated QC environment.

With uptake of supplements fast increasing, guaranteeing product safety is more important than ever. Improved pesticide screening, and quality control of food ingredients, holds great value for both individual organizations and the industry as a whole, while—crucially—enabling consumers to rest assured about the safety of the products available to them.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Sergeant Pepper On Duty

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Pepper, food fraud
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

A Northern Ireland-based analytical lab added white pepper to its portfolio of food authenticity tests based on spectroscopy with chemometric analysis. White pepper, the ripe berries of the piper nigrum plant, is undergoing an additional production step, fetches a higher price than black pepper and therefore is a target for fraudsters. Often, bulking substances like skins, flour, husks and spent materials are used, but in some cases of pepper fraud, the substances used were hazardous to human health.

Resource

  1. Taylor, P. (August 24, 2021). “With white pepper fraud on the up, Bia unveils authenticity test”. Securing Industry.