Tag Archives: food fraud

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Wine that Wins No Awards

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Wine label, food fraud
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Italy’s Guardia di Finanz (GDF) had a case of wine fraud essentially fall into their lap when a crate of fake prestigious Tuscan wine was found at the side of a road. Scammers repackaged and mislabeled cheap wine that would have fetched almost half a million dollars in revenue. The fraud was carried out with a high level of sophistication, including identical labels, bottle caps, bottle wrappers and wooden crates, and the wine was already reserved by customers in several countries.

Resource

  1. Taylor, P. (October 16, 2020). “Italian police bust fake Tuscan wine ring, seizing 4,200 bottles”. Securing Industry.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Food Fraud With Nasty Results

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis

Global food supply chains are complex and therefore quite vulnerable to errors or fraudulent activity. A company in Chile repackaged and falsely labeled cheap raspberries from China, reselling them as top-level organic Chilean raspberries in Canada. These raspberries were linked to a norovirus outbreak in Canada, sickening hundreds of people. A whistleblower complaint helped to uncover this fraudulent scheme that posed a significant risk to human health.

Raspberry, Decernis
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

Resource

  1. Sherwood, D. (October 6, 2020). “How a Chilean raspberry scam made its way into Canada leading to a norovirus outbreak”. Reuters.
Food Safety Consortium

2020 FSC Episode 7 Preview: Food Fraud

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Consortium

This week’s episode of the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series will focus on food integrity from the perspective of issues surrounding food fraud. The following are some highlights:

  • Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment and Mitigation Plan, with Steve Sklare, Food Safety Academy; Karen Everstine, Ph.D., Decernis; and Peter Begg, Glanbia Nutritionals
  • Food Fraud Case History: Glanbia Nutritionals, with Peter Begg, Glanbia Nutritionals
  • Public Standards—Protecting the Integrity of the Food Supply Chain, with Steven Gendel, Ph.D., Food Chemicals Codex
  • Monitoring and Predicting Food Safety and Fraud Risks in Challenging Times, with Giannis Stoitsis, Agroknow

The event begins at 12 pm ET. Haven’t registered? Follow this link to the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series, which provides access to 14 episodes of critical industry insights from leading subject matter experts! We look forward to your joining us virtually.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Listen To Your Elder(berries)

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis

As a tasty source of Vitamin C, B6, antioxidants, iron and more, elderberries have been a growing part of the latest health, immune boosting and wellness trends. Currently, the demand exceeds the supply for elderberries. For the past four to five years, this growth in popularity has been inviting adulteration of elderberry with other dark berries such as blueberries, as well as dyes, black rice and other materials. According to the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program, such fraud can be detected by a variety of chromatographic methods.

Food fraud, elderberry
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

Resource

  1. Schultz, H. (September 23, 2020) “Nature’s Way finds more evidence of widespread elderberry adulteration”. Nutra Ingredients-USA.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

To Bee Or Not To Bee

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Bee, food fraud, honey
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

Fake honey is an enormous economical burden on beekeepers and consumers around the world. Adulteration methods are becoming more and more sophisticated. Besides the old-fashioned scams of real honey getting diluted or replaced by syrup, new tricks show up, for example pollen getting blended into syrup, chemical alteration of syrup to confuse tests, fake honey traveling through a number of countries to mask its country of origin, or a combination of these methods. Since the adulterated honey does not pose a risk to consumer’s health, government enforcement to detect and punish honey adulteration has not been very strong. So far, authenticity tests are mostly left to the private sector and the honey industry.

Resource

  1. Copeland, C. (August 26, 2020). “Honey is one of the most faked foods in the world, and the US government isn’t doing much to fix it“. Business Insider.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Hot on Food Fraudsters’ Heels

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Microscope, pepper
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit Susanne Kuehne.

The Institute of Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast successfully identifies food fraud in the ever more complex food supply chain by developing and applying reliable analytical tests. Chris Elliott, professor of food safety and founder of the Institute, points out a two-tier approach of untargeted analysis and targeted analysis. Tier One is low cost and easy-to-use with 80–90% reliability. The second tier of highly sophisticated analytical methods, like mass spectrometry, gas chromatography and others, can identify a food item with a 99.999% certainty. These analytical methods combined with correct data are able to identify even details like type of fish, country of origin of a food item, added ingredients, and much more.

Resource

  1. Professor Chris Elliott. (August 13, 2020). “Reliable targeted analysis solutions to fight food fraud.” The Scientists’ Channel.
Karen Everstine, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

More Than 100 Incident Records of Fresh Produce Fraud

By Karen Everstine, Ph.D.
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Karen Everstine, Decernis

Fraud in fresh produce can occur in several ways, including fraudulent organic certifications, counterfeit branding, misrepresentation of geographic origin, and the use of unapproved ripening agents. Since most fresh produce is visually identifiable, partial dilution or replacement with less expensive substances is usually not possible. Fraud in produce is commonly related to labeling claims about production practices, production location or brand names. In some parts of the world, unapproved substances may be used to speed or enhance ripening or to make fruits look more visually appealing.

In 2019, a company in Canada was charged with misrepresenting broccoli grown in California as “Product of Canada.” In 2018, 500 kg of mangoes were seized from a market in Puducherry, India, for being ripened with calcium carbide.

Food fraud fresh produce map
Figure 1. Geographic distribution of incidents of fraud in fresh produce

There are currently 108 incident records and 54 inference records for fresh produce in the Food Fraud Database. Many of these are related to fraudulent organic certificates, but there are also examples of varietal misrepresentation, falsification of geographic origin, the use of substances such as ethephon, artificial color enhancement, and counterfeit labeling.

Do you work in the fresh produce sector in the U.S. or U.K.? Please consider responding to a survey to collect information about the use of food fraud tools by members of the fresh produce sector. This is an exploratory an anonymous survey that will take six to eight minutes to complete. The results will be used in a P.D. thesis by a student at the University of Central Lancashire in the U.K. A copy of the published research will be available on the University’s website. Experience the survey or copy and paste the following link into your browser: https://uclan.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Qcog9H1V09wF01

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

A Truly Bitter Herb

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food fraud, oregano blossom
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

The European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) Portal shows a notification about the use of olive leaves in oregano in Turkey. Addition of cheaper bulking agents to herbs and spices is a common way of achieving a higher profit margin for pricier herbs. The olive leaves were classified as an unauthorized novel ingredient; however, they are known to be used for the adulteration of oregano. An investigation of commercial oregano samples showed that one quarter of samples were adulterated with other plant leaves, and two of the samples didn’t even contain any oregano.

Resources

  1. European Commission RASFF Portal. (August 14, 2020). Notification details – 2020.3270 “Unauthorised novel food ingredient olive leaves in oregano from Turkey, via the Netherlands”.
  2. Black, C. et al. (November 1, 2016) “A comprehensive strategy to detect the fraudulent adulteration of herbs: The oregano approach”. Food Chemistry.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Inspector Meerkat: Fraudulent Coconut Oil

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis

Inspector Meerkat checking in with this week’s food fraud investigation: While scanning the Food Fraud Database, I found that coconut oil was recently added to the site. There have been six reported incidents of fraud in coconut oil since 2013, with the most recent incident reported May 2019. Five of the incidents involved coconut oils produced in India, and one incident involved products from the Philippines. Reasons for adulteration include fraudulent labeling claims, dilution or substitution with an alternate ingredient, and misrepresentation of botanical origin.

Resource

  1. “Technology-Enabled Risk Management”. Food Fraud Database.

Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

The Very Mellow Yellow

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Adulteration
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit Susanne Kuehne.

Lead chromate, flour, curcuma, Metanil Yellow or Sudan Dye, anyone? These are just some of the possibly hazardous adulterants that may make their appearance in turmeric, a popular and pricey spice and ingredient in dietary supplements. The American Botanical Council published a laboratory guidance document to determine the proper methods for the analysis of a number of adulterants. The document gives lists of the methods with their pros and cons, grouped by type of adulterant.

Resource

  1. Cardellina II, J.H., Ph.D. (2020). “Turmeric Raw Material and Products Laboratory Guidance Document”. American Botanical Council.