News

UKAS recently published its Annual Report for 2021/2022, which also contained contributions from external experts providing their own perspectives on a range of important topics. This paper is from Emanuele Riva, Chair of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), who considers the future for international collaboration in the accreditation arena. 

At the international level, accreditation is entering a very significant internal reflection phase.  The scenarios are difficult to predict.  On the face of it, the crisis in Ukraine has the potential to threaten the long-term unity of international organisations.  In reality, the accreditation community is coming even closer together, with IAF and ILAC (International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation) having decided to join together to become one new organisation. The paper speculates about the future developments taking into account the changes occurring in digitisation and the drive for sustainability.

Read the article here

 Alcobaça apples are a desireable, old variety of apple grown in Portugal. They are registered as a PGI (Protected Geographical Indication), which covers production in a small area of the west coast of Portugal. This project developed a method to verify the origin of Alcobaça apples and hence their PGI status using multielement analysis and chemometrics.  “Alcobaça Apples” PGI apple pulp samples, Portuguese PGI and non-PGI areas, as well as different PGI cultivars and clones, were analysed for 23 elements content. Using VIP-PLS-DA (Variable Importance in Projection Partial Least-Squares Discriminant Analysis) on the  multielement signatures, it was possible to verify the origin to the PGI growing areas, and distinguish them from other varieties of apples grown in the same area and different areas.

Read the full open access paper

 The sale of halal foods has increased considerably making it a priority to develop methods to authenticate halal certification. This review exams the development of rapid methods based on DNA analysis, which principally determine meat species.  In this review, several rapid DNA techniques such as multiplex PCR, convection PCR, PCR-RFLP, PCRstrip, real-time PCR, LAMP, nanotechnology, and commercial rapid test kits for the detection of porcine DNA and DNA from other animals for halal verification are discussed.

Read the abstract and obtain the full paper here

Almond flour is a high value product susceptible to adulteration. Brazilian researchers have developed methods for the determination of almond flour adulteration, using near infrared spectroscopy (NIR). Three different portable NIR instruments were evaluated to verify the authenticity of almond flours, and the results were compared with a benchtop FT-NIR (Fourier Transform Near Infrared) spectrometer.  Fifty-four almond flours of different varieties were adulterated with low-cost flours widely consumed in Brazil. Different one class chemometric models were used to analyse the spectra. The classification results achieved 100% sensitivity and more than 95% specificity for samples with adulterant concentration of 5% (w/w) or above. Further analysis by PLSR (partial least squares regression)  models was employed to quantify almond flour purity content.

Read the abstract here

Since the pandemic, almost 40% of us order takeaway food through an app or online. Some 170,000 food businesses are on three of the biggest online platforms, Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo. They have significant reach across the takeaway, restaurant and food-to-go sectors.

These three online platforms, supported by the FSA, have developed a new Food Safety Charter. The Charter commits them to make sure businesses selling food through their platforms are registered with their Local Authority and meet a minimum standard under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS). The Charter also commits them to use their communication channels to businesses and customers to share FSA hygiene and safety information and support those with food hypersensitivities.

This initiative is a great starting point for FSA's work with online platforms and it believes it will improve compliance of food businesses with minimum standards. FSA is working to ensure food is safe wherever you buy it, and the Food Safety Charter is an example of the FSA following our guiding principle of working with and through others to protect consumers.

If you have any thoughts on regulating online food sales, FSA would be really interested to hear them in the comments section of this blog.

At the 1996 World Food Summit, the Heads of State and Government reaffirmed the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger (World Food Summit,1996). To achieve this commitment, agrifood systems will need to be transformed to sustainably deliver safe and nutritious food for all.

This publication from the Food and Agriculture Organization explores a selection of the most relevant drivers and trends identified through the FAO food safety foresight programme. While for some of the drivers and trends the food safety implications are apparent, for others these may not be as obvious. An overview of the various drivers and trends are discussed for the following selection of emerging areas of interest, as identified through the FAO food safety foresight programme:

• Climate change
• Consumer behaviours
• New food sources and food production systems
• Growing food in urban spaces
• Technological innovations
• Microbiomes in agrifood systems
• circular economy
• Food fraud.

Read full report.

This review conducted by an expert group of ILSI (International Life Science Institute) Europe details the numerous activities by authorities undertaken within different regions (Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America, and Africa) to counter food fraud. It defines "food inauthenticity" in terms of misrepresentation of a food within a contractual agreement, and/or misrepresentation of a food within a legal obligation (i.e non-compliance of the law). It also describes the guidance available to the food industry to understand how to assess the vulnerability of their businesses, and implement the appropriate mitigation.

Read the full open access paper

The authenticity and origin of animal-derived foods are important for consumer information and prevention of food fraud. This review examines the current research techniques for verifying the authenticity and origin of animal-derived foods, in particular using stable isotope ratio analysis and spectroscopic techniques coupled with chemometrics. It covers meat, dairy, and seafood products, as well as honey. It also includes the new trend of analysing the inedible parts of animals to verify their origin.

Read the abstract here

Addition of cheese whey to raw milk is an extension fraud, and this paper develops a rapid method for its detection. FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared) spectroscopy of milk produces a large amount of data, which can treated by machine learning methods such as classification tree and multilayer perceptron neural networks (MPNN) the two methods used in this study. A total of 520 samples of milk adulterated with cheese whey in concenrations from 1-30% were prepared, and 65 samples were taken as the control. These were stored at different times and temperatures, and analysed by FTIR. A further 520 samples of authentic raw milk were used, and selected components (fat, protein, casein, lactose, total solids, and solids nonfat) and freezing point (°C) were predicted using FTIR, then used as input features for the machine learning algorithms. Performance metrics included accuracy as high as 96.2% for CART (classification and regression trees) and 97.8% for multilayer perceptron neural networks, with precision, sensitivity, and specificity above 95% for both methods. The authors make a caveat on these results that the samples were all prepared from bulk raw milk, not individual milk, whose composition is more variable.

Read the full open access paper

Netflix is making a series on food fraud called "Rotten", and the first episode is about the largest food fraud case in the USA on honey fraud. The article by Ireland's National Radio (RTE) looks at the adulteration of Chinese honey sold on the US market, and the ways that  detection of adulterants and origin were avoided.

Read the article about honey fraud, which also contains a link to a trailer of Netflix's "Rotten".

This new article by our Advisory Board Member, Dr John Spink, provides a summary of the past year and drills into lessons learned and best practice recommendations.

• https://www.food-safety.com/articles/8041-supply-chain-management-a-year-in-review
• https://www.food-safety.com/authors/139-john-spink

The article can be summarized as: “The crux of the last year of supply chain management is that our problems have shifted from ‘known knowns’ to ‘unknowables.’” What I mean by this is that previously we could expect similar types of supply chain disruptions. Now, between the lingering COVID impact, the Ukraine-Russia repercussions, plus other stressors, we’re seeing many completely new and unexpected types of problems.

Read full article.

 The popularity of spelt (Triticum spelta) is growing, and there is a need for a rapid method to authenticate it, and especially to detect adulteration by common wheat. In this study, an attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) method was developed, and combined with orthogonal partial least square discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). A validation set of spelt and common wheat provided good discrimination between the two cereals. Also, adulterated samples were prepared as an external validation set, and the developed OPLS-DA model identified the spelt-common wheat mixtures as a separate class highlighting its strong predictive power. 

Read the abstract here

This paper discusses the definition of food fraud based on an analysis of 53 empirical cases on food fraud investigations conducted at the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA). It suggests that the scope of food fraud is widened and encompasses three forms of food fraud: food laundering, fraudulent food enhancement, and facilitative food fraud. Food laundering encompasses the use of illegal material as food, whereas fraudulent food enhancement describes a situation where legal food is value-enhanced through deceitful cost-cutting measures. Facilitative food fraud captures the role of facilitative actors that operate illegally and intentionally for economic advantage. On the basis of this widened scope a modified definition of food fraud is proposed: food fraud is committed by any actor who is intentionally involved in illegal acts for economic advantage, thus causing or facilitating illegal food to be laundered into the supply chain or for food to be fraudulently value-enhanced.

Read the full open access paper.

This study looked at verification of egg production method from organic, free range, barn and caged produced eggs, all of which are defined in EU legislation. A total of 84 eggs were bought from local supermarkets in northern Spain (18 each of organic and free range eggs, and 24 each of barn and caged eggs). The egg contents were homogenised and centrifuged to separate the plasma from the granules, and the UV-VIS-NIR spectra of the plasma measured in a spectrophotometer, and different chemometric models applied to the spectra variables . As two samples were detected as outliers and removed, the 82 samples were divided into two groups: 62 for model calibration and 20 for validation. Spectra analysis with QDA (quadratic discriminant analysis) gave a higher accurate categorisation of the four production systems, with a sensitivity of 100% in the calibration set. The validation set scored 87.5% sensitivity and 94.07% specificity using the visible spectra. 

Read the full open access paper

The aim of this literature review of 51 scientific papers was to answer the question - "What is the mislabelling rate in seafood products sold on the Italian market?“. Samples were considered mislabelled when the species found by DNA analysis did not correspond with the description on the label. The most sampled seafood taxa were fish (83.8%): mackerels, cods, herrings, flatfishes and jacks were the most represented species. Unprocessed fillet/slice was the most analysed retail form (61.4%), and samples were collected at retail premises (76.5%) in 10 Italian regions. The overall weighted mislabelling rate was 28.4%, with the highest levels of mislabelling reported in samples of jellyfishes, European perch, European grouper, Atlantic mackerel and samples labelled as “spinarolo”, “baccalà” or “palombo”. There were also geographical differences and type of retail channel.

Read the abstract here

A collaborative study was undertaken in which five international laboratories participated to determine amino acid fingerprints in 39 authentic nonfat dry milk (NFDM)/skimmed milk powder (SMP) samples. A rapid method of amino acid analysis involving microwave-assisted hydrolysis followed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection (UHPLC-UV) was used for quantitation of amino acids and to calculate their distribution and amino acid fingerprint. Amino acid fingerprints of authentic NFDM/SMP were compared with those of spiked samples with selected proteins and nitrogen rich compounds (proteins from pea, soy, rice, wheat, whey, fish gelatin, and melamine).The amino acid fingerprints of NFDM/SMP were found to be affected by spiking with pea, soy, rice, whey, fish gelatin and arginine, but not by wheat protein and melamine, which would need to be detected by different methodology. 

Read the full open access paper here

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published its September 2022 Food Fraud Monthly Summary reporting food fraud incidents and investigations from around the world. These have been kindly represented as an infographic above by our Member Bruno Séchet, and thanks for allowing us to share it with the rest of the Network.

Included in this September Summary, there is also a link to a report about the EU controls on illegal fishing, and how they are weakened by uneven checks and sanctions by Member States.

You can download the full Food Fraud Summary here  

This is Tenet's quarterly publication (Issue 5), which discusses the various methods of tackling food fraud, from food safety and quality legislation, and consumer protection legislation, to contract law and trade practices. It also examines the importance of auditing your suppliers and look deeper into non-party disclosure and ‘Norwich Pharmacal’ orders.

If you work in the food and drinks industry and take an interest in fraud and financial crime impact in the sector, please take a look at the Secret Ingredient -Issue 5.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has updated its areas of research interest (ARI) to include a focus on food that is healthier and more sustainable.

Herbs and spices are one of the food commodities most susceptible to adulteration and fraud. In this study, 5 fingerprinting techniques - Near Infrared (NIR), Mid-Infrared (MIR), Hyper Spectral Imaging (HSI), Gas Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry (GC–MS), and Proton-transfer Reaction Time-of-Flight Mass spectrometry (PTR-TOF-MS), combined with chemometrics, are examined to evaluate their potential to authenticate oregano. In total, 102 oregano samples from one harvest season were analysed for origin and variety assessment, 159 samples for adulteration assessment, and 72 samples for batch-to-batch control. Different chemometric models were applied for adulteration, origin and variety assessment. The best results were for origin assessment, which gave prediction rates of more than 89%. A level of 10% adulteration of oregano with myrtle, sumac, olive and cistus could be detected using HSI, NIR and PTR-TOF-MS.

Read the abstract here