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12283083899?profile=RESIZE_584xWe have now added signposts to the free IAEA training and Excel add-in for chemometrics to our permanent resources lists.  You can find details on our e-seminars page.  To aid navigation, it is also listed within mitigation tools.  The add-in is invaluable to any laboratory building an authenticity classification model based upon multivariate analysis of known reference samples.

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Handheld scanner for seafood origin testing

12282070292?profile=RESIZE_400xResearchers at Sydney universities are working on the application of handheld XRF scanners (traditionally used for rock or mineral analysis) to the classification of seafood origin by multi-element analysis with chemometric profiling.  The goal is a point-of-use technique that can be applied to fresh seafood and give a result within a few minutes.  Origin verification has a high public profile because the Australian government have signalled their intent to introduce mandatory country of origin labelling on fish and seafood.  The researchers published a proof of concept study in July using tiger prawns.  It is now reported that they are working with Sydney Fish Market to build a database of authentic samples to underpin a wider roll-out of the test.

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12271680465?profile=RESIZE_400xThe latest issue of Tenet Law’s “The Secret Ingredient” fraud mitigation newsletter includes a case study of APP fraud within the food industry supply chain.   Although a risk usually associated with consumer-to-business transactions such as property sales, Tenet warn that fraudsters are attracted to payments that are high in value, and to circumstances which easily lend themselves to email chains discussing payment, where a fake email changing account details would not necessarily look out of place. The food industry with its international supply chains and high value transactions is an enticing target. 

The red flags in this business-to-business version of the fraud are exactly the same as consumers are typically warned about in phishing e-mails including unusual e-mail addresses, poor spelling or grammar, unsolicited requests for financial details and incorrectly replicated company logos or footers.

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Tomato powder adulteration by Aquaphotomics NIR

12271424677?profile=RESIZE_400xAquaphotomics is the classification of samples solubilised in water by the effective change of the water’s NIR spectrum.  In this proof of concept study (open access) the authors successfully applied the technique to in-house samples of tomato powder that had been adulterated with bulking agent (cornflour) and/or colouring agents to mask the adulteration (a selected range of red food dyes were tested).  They found that after principle component analysis and linear discriminant analysis (PDA-LDA) the technique could discriminate adulterated from unadulterated samples at ranges from 0.5 – 20% adulteration.  They repeated the study for three different varieties of tomatoes.  Each classification model is specific to an individual tomato variety.  The authors conclude that this could be the basis for a quick and cheap field test for adulterated tomato powder, a concern in countries where fresh tomatoes are unavailable out of season and thus powder is popular as a culinary ingredient.

 

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Theft and Resale of Olive Oil on the Rise

12271336470?profile=RESIZE_180x180There are increasing reports of organised theft of extra virgin olive oil from production mills in Andalucia. This latest media report references other cases in the past few weeks. The traceability documentation is falsified prior to intended re-sale.  Bulk commodity prices of Spanish extra virgin olive oil have doubled in the past year following poor harvests, as has Italian.  Greek prices have also increased but not to the same extent.

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12271327682?profile=RESIZE_400xThis comprehensive review (open access) lists applications, advantages and limitations of recent analytical strategies to authenticate whiskey (the authors use the Irish spelling but it also covers Scotch whisky).  It includes a wide range of spectroscopic, chromatographic, and novel techniques such as e-sensors that have all been used within the past 5 years.  The authors discuss future trends and perspectives.  They conclude that combining analytical and chemometric methodologies will remain fundamental in whiskey classification.

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

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HPLC-UV method to detect syrup addition to honey

12269370673?profile=RESIZE_180x180Honey adulteration can be very sophisticated and methods to detect it correspondingly sophisticated, expensive, and difficult to access in some countries.  Basic fraud, however, such as the addition of sugar syrups is still a possibility and can be difficult to detect even with isotope ratio techniques depending on the origin of the sugar syrup plant source.  In this study (open access), a relatively cheap honey authentication method based on HPLC-UV fingerprinting was developed.  The authors report a 100% classification rate of honey samples against a great variety of sugar syrups (agave, corn, fiber, maple, rice, sugar cane and glucose) by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). In addition, the detection and level quantitation of adulteration using syrups as adulterants (down to 15%) was accomplished by partial least squares (PLS) regression with low prediction errors by both internal and external validation (values below 12.8% and 19.7%, respectively).

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12265091873?profile=RESIZE_400xPhospholipids (PhLs) are essential components of cell membranes, characterized by a hydrophobic tail and a hydrophilic headgroup. . PhLs are found naturally in foods such as egg yolks, milk, or vegetable oils. The composition and concentration of PhLs observed in these foods vary according to the analytical methodology applied, mainly in the extraction and sample treatment process. There is limited research on using PhL profiles for food authentication.  This review (purchase required) focusses on recent analytical strategies used in characterizing PhLs in distinctive foodstuffs (eggs, milk, and vegetable oils). It discusses sample preparation, analytical separation, and detection techniques, particularly liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. The authors conclude that untargeted approaches, such as PhL fingerprinting, have the potential to characterise the authenticity of food products. The review also highlights the potential of multivariate approaches to incorporate information on PhL composition to assess the authenticity of food products, an area that has been largely overlooked in previous studies.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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12264338893?profile=RESIZE_400xIn this paper (open access) the authors used non-targeted nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in combination with principal components analysis followed by linear discriminant analysis (PCA-LDA) to build a classification model that discriminated fresh from frozen-thawed fish (mackerel, trout, cod). The optimum extraction and NMR method was chosen after evaluating 6 methods to investigate both the lipid fraction and the polar fraction of the fish samples. After cross-validation embedded in a Monte Carlo resampling design, six independent classification models were obtained. Evaluation of the multivariate data analysis revealed that the most promising approaches were the 1H NMR analysis of the lipid fraction (correct prediction of about 90.0%) and the 1H NMR based screening of minor components of the lipid fraction with a correct prediction of about 91.9%. 1H NMR analysis of the water extract of the fish samples showed a correct prediction of about 82.6%. The authors conclude that a general differentiation of fresh from frozen-thawed fish via non-targeted NMR is feasible, even though the underlying sample batch contained different fish species. Additional fish samples need to be analyzed with the three most promising NMR approaches to further improve the developed classification models.

Photo by Marko Markovic on Unsplash

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12258421899?profile=RESIZE_584xThis analysis, based on surveys or structured interviews with over 200 food and agriculture businesses, lists the most popular and effective strategies that businesses adopted to deal with the heightened threat of food fraud during Covid-19.  There was a consensus that a mixed portfolio of mitigation strategies were essential and that previous incidents had helped to improve mitigation strategies.  None of the companies reported falling victim to fraud during Covid and all considered in retrospect that geopolitical tensions were more concerning than the Covid-19 pandemic.  Although businesses did not regret the additional resources they invested in mitigation they did not consider that Covid-19 had been a main trigger for food fraud.

A number of companies had experience of being victims of fraud in the past and some examples are given.  Consensus mitigation strategies are grouped as information is power, supply chain relationship, understanding product characteristics vulnerabilities and testing capability, and people centred approaches.  There are some simple steps recommended for Small and Medium Enterprises.

This analysis was published in June.  Thank you to a respondent of our recent FAN members’ survey for bringing it to our attention.  Members are always welcome to highlight interesting items on the FAN website discussion boards, which we can then pick up in our monthly highlights bulletin.

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12255098692?profile=RESIZE_710xThe Government Chemist and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have published a sampling protocol for the collection of honey reference samples.

This protocol, the first of its kind in the world, defines a practical and pragmatic process for obtaining reference samples at different points in the honey supply chain, and specifies what associated records, documents and other considerations are necessary for a sample to be deemed acceptable for inclusion in a honey authenticity database.

The protocol is also available through the Defra website and has been added to the 'Guides' tab of the 'Tools_Guides_Reports' part of our 'Food Fraud Prevention' section of our website.

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12254151091?profile=RESIZE_400xThe report from the 12th internationally-co-ordinated police investigation into food crime (Opson) has been published.  This cycle of the operation focussed on Europe and involved only Europol rather than Interpol.  The report highlights a significant increase in findings of fraudulent recycling of spoiled or expired food to reduce production costs (although this was a foreseen risk, and so deliberately targeted when the operation was planned).   The misuse of protected food names was also the focus of the operational activities. In the United Kingdom, authorities performed checks on protected food name products in food service establishments, such as restaurants, and in individual retailers. The checks identified cases of non-compliance with products, such as feta, Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano cheeses, and meats such as Prosciutto di Parma and products of UK origin such as Welsh beef, Cornish pasties and watercress. The checks identified mislabelling, the temporary unavailability of a specified ingredient in restaurants, but also a lack of understanding of the regulations governing the use of protected food names.

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What works to prevent food fraud? UK FSA report

12254112501?profile=RESIZE_400xThis literature study, led by the University of Lincoln, was commissioned by the FSA’s National Food Crime Unit in order to inform the advice and guidance they give to food businesses, particularly SMEs, regarding food fraud mitigation.

The report covers a number of areas of recognised best practice including the concept of cumulative prevention steps (“hurdles”) in building a food defence strategy.  They can be summarised as increasing the effort (for the fraudster), increasing the risks, reducing the rewards, reducing the temptations and removing the excuses, The authors stress that food business operators can minimise fraud risk by focused supplier approval and procurement processes being embedded in their ‘business as usual’ operations. They recognise the risk that supply chain pressures and practices to deliver low-margin and lower cost food products can promote mindsets and an operating environment where deception, misrepresentation, and fraud occur.

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12245499060?profile=RESIZE_710xThe UK Food Standards Agency has published a report that has developed a Cost of Food Crime (CoFC) model, which identifies and measures the economic and social cost of food crime.

Cost of Food Crime to the UK

  • The total cost of food crime on the UK is estimated to be between £410 million and £1.96 billion per year.
  • This is equivalent to between 0.07% and 0.33% of the UK food industry turnover each year (BEIS, 2021).
  • The estimated value of fraudulent food and drink in the UK is between £296 million and £1.48 billion per year (discussed in Section 2.4 CoFC).
  • The range in the estimated total cost of food crime represents the sensitivity to the volume of criminal activity, from crimes reported to estimates of total crimes (including unreported activity). Further research is required to develop the quality of data in order to narrow the range with confidence. 

The full report can be accessed here.

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12245113890?profile=RESIZE_400xCinnamomum verum (true cinnamon or Ceylon cinnamon) and Cinnamomum cassia (Cinnamomum aromaticum, false cinnamon) are both common food ingredients and can be difficult to differentiate. True cinnamon has a price premium.  This paper (open access) gives a review of review of analytical methods to discriminate the two species.  The authors report that a diverse array of techniques have been documented, encompassing organoleptic, physical, chemical, and instrumental methodologies, such as spectroscopic and chromatographic methods. They conclude that electronic noses (e-noses), which detect and analyse volatile organic compound (VOC) profiles, have significant potential for a rapid, non-destructive, and cost-effective approach.  The authors also conclude that continued research and development efforts in the utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms in conjunction with spectroscopic data will lead to improved methods to combat cinnamon adulteration.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

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12243025069?profile=RESIZE_400xFoodChainID have produced a free white paper “Current Food Supply Chain Threats – Is Your Company’s Brand Reputation At Risk?”  The paper can be downloaded via the NutraIngredients site here.  It cites the uncertainty in some regions about the future regulation of aspartame as an example of how to react to a rapidly developing regulatory situation in order to protect your brand.  It also covers, at a high level,  how to mitigate the risk of economically motivated adulteration.  It particularly highlights the current heightened fraud risks relating to avocado oil and alcohol adulteration.

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12243022062?profile=RESIZE_400xThis article reports the results of a survey of 50 Bangladeshi retail honeys, including both a premium multifloral (Sundarban) and premium monofloral varieties.  Analysis was by isotope ration mass spectrometry (carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the protein fraction, plus carbon in the whole honey).  9 of the honeys were found to be adulterated with C4-sugar syrups when assessed using internationally-accepted criteria.  The remaining 41 honeys were used to build an isotope-ratio classification model that can discriminate Bangladeshi honeys from other geographic origins and so can be used as a future classification tool.  The work was funded by IAEA and we are grateful to co-author and FAN member Simon Kelly for providing this author’s hyperlink which gives free access until November 24.

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Dealing with bribery in the supply chain

12240000854?profile=RESIZE_180x180This article in Food Manufacture gives an overview of how to assess the risk of bribery within your supply chain and how to mitigate those risks. The article is written by Tenet Law from a UK perspective but the principles are universal. It will be of interest, particularly, to directors of any company trading in the US who are often acutely aware of their personal liability under US law. The article describes how to mitigate risk by onboarding suppliers, by ongoing due diligence and by regular contract monitoring.

Photo by Andres Perez on Unsplash

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12238969484?profile=RESIZE_180x180An article by legal firm Potter Clarkson gives insight from a Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA) follow-up to Europol’s Operation Opson.  The DVFA concluded that many food manufacturers were too liberal in the way they used protected food origins or descriptors – such as parmesan cheese or La Mancha wine – on their products.  Legally-protected terms cannot be used without evidence from ingredient suppliers to back them up.  Although the DVFA concluded that these were mainly “unconscious violations” they still broke EU (and UK)  law.  Potter Clarkson conclude that Danish violations are minor in comparison to other countries and that lack of legal compliance is an international problem.  The article gives a good summary of EU law in this area.

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