Tag Archives: mislabeling

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Another Seafood Fraud: The Cephalopod Edition

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Squid, Portugal
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database.
Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

For more than three years, more than 100,000 pounds of giant squid from Peru was imported into the United States by a father-son duo who owned two Long Island food processing and distribution companies, and then marketed the squid as the more expensive octopus. The mislabeled seafood was worth over $1 million, and 10 grocery stores were defrauded during this time period. This kind of fraud carries steep fines and a possible five-year prison sentence.

Resource

  1. The United States Department of Justice (November 25, 2019). “New York Food Processing and Distribution Companies and Owners Plead Guilty to Seafood Sales Fraud”. Retrieved from Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Press Release Number 19-1307.

 

Production line, NiceLabel

Farm-to-Fork Transparency: How Digitized Labeling Can Prevent a Major Allergen Recall

By Lee Patty
No Comments
Production line, NiceLabel

For consumers and brands alike, the damaging impact of mislabeling or neglecting to clearly outline an allergen can be colossal. Therefore, to prevent a health and business disaster, best practices around allergen labeling must be top of mind. Luckily, technology can help, and the farm-to-fork transparency provided by a centralized and digitized modern label management system can ensure organizations improve responsiveness and accuracy while reducing costs beyond those saved by mitigating recalls.

No one wants to face a recall, but have you done enough to prevent one from happening to you? More than 650 food products were recalled last year in the United States alone. And one of the leading causes might just be the easiest to prevent: Undeclared allergens.

According to the Q2 2019 Stericycle Recall Index, undeclared allergens are the leading cause of U.S. food recalls, accounting for 48.4% of food recalls from the FDA and 62.9% of food pounds recalled by the USDA. This statistic becomes more alarming considering that roughly 11% of US adults have a food allergy, according to JAMA.

Enacted in 2004, the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) stipulates that all packaged food regulated under the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFD&C) comply by listing major food allergens. “Major allergens” refers to milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans, and for nuts and shellfish, the species must be declared.

For brands, the damaging impact of mislabeling or neglecting to clearly outline an allergen can be colossal, resulting in costly recalls or litigation. However, the impact to consumers can be even greater when one small mistake can cause serious illness, or worse, death. To prevent a health and business nightmare, best practices around allergen labeling must be top of mind.

However, with constantly changing legislation, this can be easier said than done. For instance, in a move that outpaced the FDA, Illinois issued a state law requiring sesame labeling. And in the UK, Natasha’s Law was recently introduced, requiring companies to label all food ingredients on fresh pre-packaged food after 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died of a sesame allergy from a sandwich that didn’t list all the ingredients.

The need for optimal allergen labeling is clear, so how can organizations ensure allergens are clearly labeled on their products and meet existing standards while preparing for future requirements?

Though the underlying principle behind a clear label is simple, the process of designing such labels can be multifaceted and difficult to streamline—especially if labels are designed, printed and managed by separate users across a franchise or store network. And this challenge is multiplied further when products reach across international boundaries. But technology can help, and the farm-to-fork transparency provided by a centralized and digitized modern label management system can ensure organizations improve responsiveness and accuracy while reducing costs beyond those saved by mitigating recalls.

Disorganized Sprawl: A Major Hurdle to Effective Labeling

When implemented properly, modern label management can cost-effectively centralize labeling, reducing inefficiencies and human error. However, before this can happen, there are a few common roadblocks that may make standardizing the labeling process challenging.

One issue may be a sprawl of legacy equipment that is not integrated into a cohesive network. For instance, a legacy labeling system may only support certain label printers while certain manufacturers of direct marking equipment may only support their own propriety brand of printers. In another sense, a lack of standardization can also make it difficult to efficiently integrate labeling with other business solutions like manufacturing execution systems (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

A damaging impact of sprawl is adoption of a wide range of different labeling applications across various facilities. This will result in inconsistent label formatting, the need to create the same label multiple times, and the need to accommodate different systems and printers. Consequences of this may be a lack of centralized storage when everything is saved locally, complex user training encompassing many software programs, an increased burden on IT, and a great deal of extra administration and human intervention to maintain and update labels.

Another problem with a disorganized ecosystem for labeling is that quality assurance inevitably suffers because tracing a label’s history or implementing standardized approval processes can be difficult or impossible. To accurately track labeling, it’s necessary to have a production log stating where and when labels were produced and who produced them. Having such a log and using it effectively requires centralization or else it can become difficult to track different versions or enforce universal approval processes for altering templates.

Implementing Modernized Labeling to Improve QA

Modern label management systems can help suppliers and manufacturers standardize and control marking packaging or label production across an entire organizational ecosystem. These solutions feature a central, web-based document management system and provide a reliable storage space for label templates and label history. This will enable changes and updates to be tracked centrally, so local facilities can access uniform and accurate templates to produce labels.

An ideal label management system can also interface with a multitude of direct marking and labeling printers, even if they are from different manufacturers, and it can integrate labeling and direct marking with a business system’s master data, which eliminates manual data entry errors. This decreases upfront capital expenditures in more costly efforts to standardize equipment, provides a system that is easy to integrate with partners, saves costs generated from having to discard product or rework labels, and increases a company’s ability to implement unified, organization-wide labeling processes.

Centralized Labeling is Easily Delivered Through Cloud

To many, the thought of migrating legacy labeling to a centralized system or investing a large sum of resources into centralizing labeling may seem inordinate or daunting. However, cloud technology makes migrating to a modern label management system feasible for organizations of all sizes.

With the cloud, designing labels and ensuring quality assurance becomes far more accessible. Additionally, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model doesn’t require the capital investments or operations and maintenance upkeep associated with costly IT infrastructure and is easily scalable depending on business needs. This is a game changer for small to medium sized businesses who can now benefit from a centralized labeling system because of the cloud.

The Benefits of a “Single-source-of-truth”

In addition to other benefits, integrating a modern label management solution with other business systems allows users to access a “single-source-of-truth.” This allows for enforceable, specific user roles with logins for each user as well as traceability and transparency across all factories that produce products. The traceability from being able to monitor a “single-source-of-truth” is a critical component to farm-to-fork transparency because it can provide an accurate production log overviewing label versions and changes, so companies can pinpoint the locations and causes of labeling inaccuracies and fix them instantly.

A modern label management system also enables organizations to nimbly respond to new regulatory requirements because alterations only need to be made in one location, new templates can be previewed before going to production, and nutrition and allergen functionality can be easily formatted so that it is clear and stands out to the consumer. This increases labeling consistency and accuracy, and saves time when rules change and when new products need to be incorporated during a merger or acquisition.

Futureproofing and Ensuring Consumer Safety with Allergen Labeling

In today’s world, food and beverage manufacturers must rise to the challenge of changing regulations while meeting the call of shifting customer demands and integrating themselves within greater business ecosystems and extended supply chains. In the case of allergen labeling, this may mean preparing labels for different countries, which have varying standards for labeling allergens like sesame, royal jelly, bee pollen, buckwheat and latex, or ensuring labels can be altered quickly when new products are rolled out or when bodies like the FDA revamp standards.

Companies that implement modern label management solutions position themselves to adapt to competition and regulations quickly, implement solutions that can easily be integrated with partners in a supply chain, and streamline quality control. This can help improve productivity, reduce labeling errors, increase collaboration, and prevent product recalls. But most importantly, it helps ensure the safety of consumers everywhere.

Nuts, tree nuts

Q3 Hazard Beat: Nuts, Nut Products and Seeds

By Food Safety Tech Staff
No Comments
Nuts, tree nuts

The following infographic is a snapshot of the hazard trends in nuts, nut products and seeds from Q3 2019. The information has been pulled from the HorizonScan quarterly report, which summarizes recent global adulteration trends using data gathered from more than 120 reliable sources worldwide. For the past several weeks, Food Safety Tech has provided readers with hazard trends from various food categories included in this report. This week’s hazard snapshot concludes the series.

Nut hazards, HorizonScan
2019 Data from HorizonScan by FeraScience, Ltd.

View last week’s hazards in Milk & Dairy Products.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

It Is Natural, So It Is Good For You – Or Not?

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Pills, food fraud
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

In a large study of nearly 6000 products, more than a quarter (27%) of herbal medicines and foods sold in 37 countries on six continents was found to be deliberately or accidentally adulterated. In this study, the products, which came in a variety of forms such as softgels, tea and more, were analyzed with high throughput DNA sequencing and showed mislabeling, added fillers, substituted ingredients or contaminants. Such fraud can be a harmful to consumer health and safety, and must be monitored and tracked closely.

Resource

  1. Ichim, M.C. (October 24, 2019). “The DNA-Based Authentication of Commercial Herbal Products Reveals Their Globally Widespread Adulteration”. “Stejarul” Research Centre for Biological Sciences, National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences, Piatra Neamt, Romania. Frontiers in Pharmacology. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2019.01227/full.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

The Hellcat of Pet Food

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud, pet food, cat food
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

Pet food is a highly profitable business. Global pet food sales hit a record $90 billion in 2018, and adulterated or mislabeled feed is not uncommon. In the United States, the FDA ensures correct labeling and adherence to quality standards in pet food. Over the course of six years, a processing facility in Texas shipped low quality, mislabeled ingredients such as feathers and by-products, labeled as premium single ingredients, to pet food manufacturers and distributors. The guilty party had to pay $4.5 millions in restitution to the fraud victims, and the defendant is on a five year probation.

Resources

  1. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Missouri (October 24, 2019). “Texas Manager Pleads Guilty to Pet Food Fraud, Company Pays $4.5 Million Restitution”. Retrieved from The United States Department of Justice.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

I Have a Beef with You

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud, Decernis, Prime beef
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Over the course of three years, wholesale meat fraudsters in Brooklyn, NY, removed the USDA stamp on “Choice” beef and applied a counterfeit USDA “Prime” stamp to sell the fraudulently labeled meat at a premium price. A conviction can get the defendants a prison sentence of up to 20 years, even public health was not endangered, however, the USDA is taking integrity and quality of food very seriously.

Resources

  1. John Marzulli, U.S. Attorney’s Office (September 24, 2019). “Two Defendants Charged in Scheme to Sell Fraudulently Misbranded Beef Products”. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

This Bufala Is No Bufala

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Bufala
Find examples of these records and more in the Food Fraud Database.

Who doesn’t enjoy a nice Insalata Caprese or pizza Margherita with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella? Based on regulations in the EU and Italy, mozzarella di bufala is supposed to be made with buffalo milk only. “Bufala” in Italian may also mean “media hoax”, however, in this case, science shows that there is indeed “no bufala”. Multiple reaction monitoring mass spectrometry brings wide-spread fraught to light, showing that two-thirds of the tested supermarket and restaurant products are made with much cheaper cow’s milk, according to a study published in Food Control.

Resources

Gunning, Y., et al. (July 2019). “Quantitative authenticity testing of buffalo mozzarella via αs1-Casein using multiple reaction monitoring mass spectrometry”. Food Control. Volume 101, Pages 189-197. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713519300775?via%3Dihub

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

A Frank Discussion About Wurst

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud, Decernis
Records involving fraud can be found in the Food Fraud Database.

A scientific study of 100 “single species” sausage, such as beef, pork, chicken, turkey and others, was conducted in Canada. It found that 14% of sausages were mislabeled as single species but contained additional undeclared species. There is some encouraging news, however: While this is still an issue that requires monitoring, 14% mislabeling is a lower rate than detected in a previous study conducted a year ago. The samples were tested at the molecular level with DNA Barcoding and ddPCR (Droplet Digital Polymerase Chain Reaction) to detect the species via their DNA.

Resource

Shehata, H.R., et al. (Jan 15, 2019). “Re-visiting the occurrence of undeclared species in sausage products sold in Canada”. Science Direct. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963996919300304

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Pretty Fishy

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Fish
Records involving fraud can be found in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Hundreds of seafood samples from U.S. grocery stores, seafood markets and restaurants were analyzed in 2018, and a large rate of mislabeling was found. Cheaper catch, for example, gets mislabeled as higher value fish, especially sea bass, snapper or halibut. Other frauds include illegally caught fish or seafood mislabeled as sustainable, covering up harmful environmental practices. In spite of federal government policy measures already in place, many gaps that allow seafood fraud to largely go undetected still exist.

Resource

  1. O., Warner, K., Roberts, W., Mustain, P., Lowell, B., & Swain, M. (2019, March 11). Casting a Wider Net: More Action Needed to Stop Seafood Fraud in the United States. https://doi.org/10.31230/osf.io/sbm8h
Dollar

Trends and Real Cost of Product Recalls

By Food Safety Tech Staff
1 Comment
Dollar

Last year, nearly 550 food products were recalled in the United States. Nearly half of those recalls were a result of biological contamination, a whopping 65% of which was due to Listeria monocytogenes, according to Rentokil. The company recently released an infographic about the cost of a product recall, pulling out some of the key trends in food product recalls in the United States and the United Kingdom. Next to biological contamination, mislabeling continues to be a large issue.

Rentokil Product Recalls 2016
The Cost of a Product Recall in the Food Industry. Infographic courtesy of Rentokil.