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
European law enforcement worked across several European countries to discover a vast glass eel smuggling operation worth $1.5 million. Glass eels are wild baby eels, which are becoming increasingly rare. Glass eels are highly priced in Asian markets, for example for aquaculture farms. Smuggling these protected species is a lucrative business in Europe, since it is illegal to export eels. This is just the tip of the iceberg: The glass eel trafficking business is estimated to have grown to more than $3 billion in size over the past few years.
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.
