Tag Archives: honey

Honey in spoon

FDA Data Finds 3% of Imported Honey Adulterated

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Honey in spoon

Recently published data from an FDA sampling assignment carried out in 2022 and 2023 to test imported honey for economically motivated adulteration (EMA) found that 3% of samples were adulterated. The sampling was designed to identify products that contained undeclared sweeteners that are less expensive than honey, such as syrups from cane and corn. This assignment follows a previous EMA in honey assignment in 2021-2022 and was intended to identify whether there continues to be issues with EMA for imported honey.

Between April 2022 and July 2023, the agency collected 107 samples of imported honey and found three samples (3%) to be violative. In 2021-2022, the agency collected and tested 144 imported honey samples, and found 10% of those samples to be violative. When a sample was found to be violative, the FDA refused entry of the product into the U.S. and placed the associated company and product on Import Alert (IA). The agency stated that it also continues to develop methods to further improve the detection of undeclared sweeteners in honey to protect consumers.

Additionally, the FDA continues to collaborate with its domestic and international regulatory partners to combat economically motivated adulteration of food products, including honey.

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.

 

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

How Not To Sweeten the Deal

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food fraud, Honey
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

Honey continues to be a popular target for fraudulent activity, as this latest case shows. A large number of batches of honey imported into Greece from inside and outside the European Union contained adulterants like added sugars and prohibited caramel colors, which was proven by chemical analysis. Honey produced in Greece was not affected. The adulterated products were immediately withdrawn from the market and the public was advised not to consume them.

Resource

  1. United Food Control Agency (April 16, 2021) “Recall of lots of honey”. EFET Portal.

 

Karen Everstine, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Food Authenticity: 2020 in Review

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

It is fair to say that 2020 was a challenging year with wide-ranging effects, including significant effects on our ongoing efforts to ensure food integrity and prevent fraud in the food system. COVID-19 caused major supply chain disruptions for foods and many other consumer products. It also highlighted challenges in effective tracking and standardization of food fraud-related data.

Let’s take a look at some of the notable food fraud occurrences in 2020:

  • Organic Products. The Spanish Guardia Civil investigated an organized crime group that sold pistachios with pesticide residues that were fraudulently labeled as organic, reportedly yielding €6 million in profit. USDA reported fraudulent organic certificates for products including winter squash, leafy greens, collagen peptides powder, blackberries, and avocados. Counterfeit wines with fraudulent DOG, PGI, and organic labels were discovered in Italy.
  • Herbs and Spices. Quite a few reports came out of India and Pakistan about adulteration and fraud in the local spice market. One of the most egregious involved the use of animal dung along with various other substances in the production of fraudulent chili powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, and garam masala spice mix. Greece issued a notification for a turmeric recall following the detection of lead, chromium, and mercury in a sample of the product. Belgium recalled chili pepper for containing an “unauthorized coloring agent.” Reports of research conducted at Queen’s University Belfast also indicated that 25% of sage samples purchased from e-commerce or independent channels in the U.K. were adulterated with other leafy material.
  • Dairy Products. India and Pakistan have also reported quite a few incidents of fraud in local markets involving dairy products. These have included reports of counterfeit ghee and fraudulent ghee manufactured with animal fats as well as milk adulterated with a variety of fraudulent substances. The Czech Republic issued a report about Edam cheese that contained vegetable fat instead of milk fat.
  • Honey. Greece issued multiple alerts for honey containing sugar syrups and, in one case, caramel colors. Turkey reported a surveillance test that identified foreign sugars in honeycomb.
  • Meat and Fish. This European report concluded that the vulnerability to fraud in animal production networks was particularly high during to the COVID-19 pandemic due to the “most widely spread effects in terms of production, logistics, and demand.” Thousands of pounds of seafood were destroyed in Cambodia because they contained a gelatin-like substance. Fraudulent USDA marks of inspection were discovered on chicken imported to the United States from China. Soy protein far exceeding levels that could be expected from cross contamination were identified in sausage in the Czech Republic. In Colombia, a supplier of food for school children was accused of selling donkey and horse meat as beef. Decades of fraud involving halal beef was recently reported in in Malaysia.
  • Alcoholic Beverages. To date, our system has captured more than 30 separate incidents of fraud involving wine or other alcoholic beverages in 2020. Many of these involved illegally produced products, some of which contained toxic substances such as methanol. There were also multiple reports of counterfeit wines and whisky. Wines were also adulterated with sugar, flavors, colors and water.

We have currently captured about 70% of the number of incidents for 2020 as compared to 2019, although there are always lags in reporting and data capture, so we expect that number to rise over the coming weeks. These numbers do not appear to bear out predictions about the higher risk of food fraud cited by many groups resulting from the effects of COVID-19. This is likely due in part to reduced surveillance and reporting due to the effects of COVID lockdowns on regulatory and auditing programs. However, as noted in a recent article, we should take seriously food fraud reports that occur against this “backdrop of reduced regulatory oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic.” If public reports are just the tip of the iceburg, 2020 numbers that are close to those reported in 2019 may indeed indicate that the iceburg is actually larger.

Unfortunately, tracking food fraud reports and inferring trends is a difficult task. There is currently no globally standardized system for collection and reporting information on food fraud occurrences, or even standardized definitions for food fraud and the ways in which it happens. Media reports of fraud are challenging to verify and there can be many media reports related to one individual incident, which complicates tracking (especially by automated systems). Reports from official sources are not without their own challenges. Government agencies have varying priorities for their surveillance and testing programs, and these priorities have a direct effect on the data that is reported. Therefore, increases in reports for a particular commodity do not necessarily indicate a trend, they may just reflect an ongoing regulatory priority a particular country. Official sources are also not standardized with respect to how they report food safety or fraud incidents. Two RASFF notifications in 2008 following the discovery of melamine adulteration in milk illustrate this point (see Figure 1). In the first notification for a “milk drink” product, the hazard category was listed as “adulteration/fraud.” However, in the second notification for “chocolate and strawberry flavor body pen sets,” the hazard category was listed as “industrial contaminants,” even though the analytical result was higher.1

RASFF

RASFF, melamine detection
Figure 1. RASFF notifications for the detection of melamine in two products.1

What does all of this mean for ensuring food authenticity into 2021? We need to continue efforts to align terminology, track food fraud risk data, and ensure transparency and evaluation of the data that is reported. Alignment and standardization of food fraud reporting would go a long way to improving our understanding of how much food fraud occurs and where. Renewed efforts by global authorities to strengthen food authenticity protections are important. Finally, consumers and industry must continue to demand and ensure authenticity in our food supply. While most food fraud may not have immediate health consequences for consumers, reduced controls can lead to systemic problems and have devastating effects.

Reference

  1. Everstine, K., Popping, B., and Gendel, S.M. (2021). Food fraud mitigation: strategic approaches and tools. In R.S. Hellberg, K. Everstine, & S. Sklare (Eds.) Food Fraud – A Global Threat With Public Health and Economic Consequences (pp. 23-44). Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-817242-1.00015-4
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Honey Detectives In Action

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

Honey is still on the list of the most adulterated foods. Adulteration can be done by mislabeling the geographical origin, by direct addition of sugars to honey, and feeding bees sugar syrup. Fortunately, a number of methods to detect fraudulent honey is available on the market. A method based on EIM-IRMS Ethanol Isotope Measurement showed to be an efficient way to detect added C3 and C4 sugars, for example from sugar beet. The research and analysis involved a number of companies and institutions (see Resources).

Resources

  1. Smajlovic, I., et. al. (2020). “Honey and diverse sugar syrups differentiation by EIM-IRMS Method”
  2. Imprint Analytics. Honey.
  3. C.N.R.I.F.F.I. China National Institute of Food and Fermentation Industries Limited
  4. Isotoptech. Honey adulteration analysis.
  5. RUDN University.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

A Sticky Criminal Endeavor

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

Honey harvest in Europe is predicted to be down by 40% in 2020. This disastrous harvest is caused by a combination of issues, including flood, draught and climate change in a variety of regions. One third of honey into the EU is imported, and cheap, sometimes fake imports are undercutting EU producers’ prices. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre states that at least 14% of honeys in the EU are adulterated. Two recent incidents of honey adulteration in Greece show that this is a serious problem and possibly an indication of more fraudulent activity to come.

Resources

  1. Askew, K. (November 9, 2020). “Honey producers stung by ‘worst harvest in decades’ call for crackdown on adulterated imports”. Food Navigator.
  2. Hellenic Food Authority. “Two cases of honey fraud in Greece.”
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

Now It’s Easier To Bee Happy

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

Honey is an easy target for food fraud and adulteration with sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, molasses and other sugars are not uncommon. To quickly identify adulterants, a method using Raman spectroscopy and pattern recognition analysis was developed. To verify the method, 97 samples were tested with the new method, and the tests confirmed with HPLC, with the result that 17% of the commercial honey samples showed fraud from added sugars.

Resource

  1. Aykas, D.P., et al. (May 5, 2020). “Authentication of commercial honeys based on Raman fingerprinting and pattern recognition analysis”. Science Direct.

 

Karen Everstine, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Public Food Standards

By Karen Everstine, Ph.D., Steven M. Gendel, Ph.D.
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Karen Everstine, Decernis

In 1995, a honey processing company was indicted on charges of adulterating industrial honey labeled “USDA Grade A” with corn syrup to increase profits. Ultimately, the jury found in favor of the honey processor, in part because there “weren’t enough regulations governing honey to make the charge stick.”

Honey is defined as “the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees” from the nectar of plants. However, there is not currently an FDA standard of identity for honey in the United States, which would further define and specify the allowed methods of producing, manufacturing and labeling honey (there is, however, a nonbinding guidance document for honey). Some of the details of honey production that a standard of identity might address include allowable timing and levels of supplemental feeding of bees with sugar syrups and the appropriate use of antibiotics for disease treatment.

In circumstances where strict regulatory standards for foods are not available, they may be created by other organizations.

What Is a Food Standard?

A food standard is “a set of criteria that a food must meet if it is to be suitable for human consumption, such as source, composition, appearance, freshness, permissible additives, and maximum bacterial content.”1

To ensure quality, facilitate trade, and reduce fraud, everyone in the supply chain must have a shared expectation of what each food or ingredient should be. Public standards set those expectations and allow them to be shared. They help ensure that stakeholders have a common definition of quality and purity, as well as the test methods and specifications used to demonstrate that quality and purity. Public standards help ensure fair trade, quality and integrity in food supply chains.

How Is a Standard Different from a Method?

A method is generally an analytical technique to assess a particular property of the content or safety of a food or food ingredient. For example, methods for detection of nitrates in meat products or baby food, coliforms in nut products, or high fructose syrups in honey. Methods are an important component of food standards.

A food standard goes a step further and provides an integrated set of components to define a substance and enable verification of that substance. Standards generally include a description of the substance and its function, one or more identification tests and assays (along with acceptance criteria) to appropriately characterize the substance and ensure its quality, a description of possible impurities and limits for those impurities (if applicable), and other information as needed (see Figure 1).

FCC Standard, USP
Figure 1. The Anatomy of an FCC Standard (Source: Food Science Program, Food Chemicals Codex, USP)

Figure 1. The Anatomy of an FCC Standard (Source: Food Science Program, Food Chemicals Codex, USP)

A standard defines both what a food or food ingredient should be and documents how to demonstrate compliance with that definition.

Public Standards and Food Fraud Prevention

Many of the foods prone to fraud are those that are not simple food ingredients, but agricultural products that can be more complex to characterize and identify (such as honey, extra virgin olive oil, spices, etc.). Milk products are an example of a commodity that is prone to fraud with a wide range of adulterants (for example, fluid cow’s milk is associated with 155 adulterants in the Food Fraud Database). Ensuring the quality and purity of a product link milk requires implementation of multiple analytical techniques or the development of non-targeted methods.

The creation of effective public standards with input by a range of stakeholders will be particularly important for ensuring the quality, safety and accurate labeling of these high value commodities in the future.

Reference

  1. A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition 2005, Oxford University Press.

Resources

  1. The Food Chemicals Codex is a source of public standards for foods and food ingredients. It was created by the U.S. FDA and the National Institute of Medicine in 1966 and is currently published by the nonprofit organization USP. The FCC contains 1250 standards for food ingredients, which are developed by expert volunteers and posted for public comment before publication.
  2. The Decernis Food Fraud Database is a continuously updated collection of food fraud records curated specifically to support vulnerability assessments. Information is gathered from global sources and is searchable by ingredient, adulterant, country, and hazard classification. Decernis also partners with standards bodies to provide information about fraudulent adulterants to support standards development.