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1% is widely used as a compliance threshold for undeclared meat species.  It is based on empirical studies which concluded that adventitious cross-contamination is unlikely to occur above 1% if cleaning protocols, typical of meat industry best practice, are used on cutting and processing equipment.

 A recent study (here – purchase required) challenges this assumption.  The authors studied cleaning protocols and adventitious cross-contamination of pork into ground beef within small-scale meat processors and butchers shops in Quebec, Canada.  They recognise that full strip-down and cleaning of grinders is impractical in these situations and is not required by local hygiene regulations.  Therefore, in practice, they found that cross-contamination of pork in ground beef can often be above 1% when businesses are operating legally and in full compliance with hygiene rules.  They recommend not using 1% as a fraud compliance threshold in this context as it could expose small-scale processors to unwarranted sanctions.

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A link to the 2016 FAO Imported Food Control manual has been added to the FAN "Policy" resources.

This is one of the series of FAO manuals describing how to set up legal frameworks and testing infrastructure for a variety of food safety issues.  Although not specifically fraud-focussed, the Imported Food Control manual does include adulteration as one of the risk factors and has a number of useful pointers and checklists when setting up a national import checks framework.

It is difficult to verify meat species in highly-processed foods that have insufficient intact DNA.  One approach is to test and interpret protein patterns.  This is far from straightforward.

A recent paper (here – purchase required) describes an advancement.  The authors used gel-eluted liquid fraction entrapment electrophoresis (GELFrEE) to separate heat-stable peptide markers, rather than proteins, prior to measurement by MALDI-ToF-MS.  They report this “peptideomics” as easier to interpret than proteomics. GELFrEE fractionation has been previously used for microbial proteins and clinical samples but rarely applied to meat speciation.  It is analogous to SDS-PAGE but protein/peptide fraction are collected in the solution phase at the end of the run. It enables large sample loadings (max. 5.0 mg/strip) improving sensitivity for low-concentration markers with a dynamic range from 3.5-500 kDa and is suitable for automation.  The authors discriminated pork/waterbuffalo in heat-processed mixes down to 0.5% w/w.

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If you are a food business and have a measurement issue that you'd like to resolve then why not apply and see if you can get the nation's top measurement laboratories on the case?

Over 90% of businesses completing an A4I Project have reported business growth due to increased productivity, and over 60% saw their competitiveness improved in their markets.

You can find out more about how we support UK
companies through the A4I programme here, and for information about the Programme and how to apply, please visit A4I.info.                                             
Start your application here!                                        
Competition opened on Monday 24 April

Monofloral honeys are generally defined by their pollen count; to be labelled as monofloral, the honey must contain a minimum proportion of pollen from the named flora.  These minimum legal criteria are not consistent between different EU Member States. Pollen identification by microscopy is also becoming a rarer skill amongst analysts. 

In this proof of concept study (here – open access) the authors propose an alternative approach using the pattern of polyphenols as a marker of botanical origin.  They measured a panel of polyphenols by UPLC-MSMS and used Principal Component Analysis to classify them for Hungarian acacia honeys.  The results not only correlated with botanical but also with regional origin.  The variation was driven by three key polyphenols; caffeic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid and p-coumaric acid.

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The USDA published (here) their new rules on verification and enforcement of Organic certification in January this year.  We are now into the implementation period.  Businesses must comply by 19 March 2024.  US retailers are starting to map out exactly what the new rules mean for them, typified by an article in last week’s trade press (here). There are also requirements for food businesses that export Organic products to the US, with a mandatory electronic import certificate and the need for all agents in the supply chain to be certified.  The new procedures should strengthen traceability and reduce the opportunity for fraud.

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Shrimp is processed into culinary powder in many countries.  Only the abdomen of mature shrimp should be included. It can be adulterated with the thorax (head), other shrimp parts (including hazardous sharps), or illegally caught immature shrimps.

Researchers from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, have published (link – purchase required) a study demonstrating the use of handheld near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) to detect adulteration. They developed models using tandem chemometrics and multiple spectral preprocessing with linear discriminant analysis.  They classified shrimp powder adulterated with milled immature shrimps at 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 100% w/w with an average cross-validation accuracy of 93%, and achieved an accuracy of 98% for equivalent classification of milled shrimp head in shrimp powder. They used the model in the field for some preliminary surveillance testing and confirmed suspected shrimp powder adulteration in Ghanaian markets.

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A recent systematic review (here – open access) covers DNA methods published 2015-2022 to detect game and unusual meat species.  It includes conventional RT-PCR, other amplification protocols and full sequencing.  The review is organised both by target species and by test method.  The authors make the point that there are tests published somewhere for almost every species but that when it comes down to practice most testing relies on RT-PCR for a limited panel of targeted species.  In Europe, particularly, there is still a strong emphasis on testing for undeclared horsemeat.  The most common “unusual” species included in targeted tests are buffalo, camel, deer, donkey, fox, mink, horse, rabbit, wild boar and yak.

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Global consumption of quinoa flour has increased in recent years. It is a relatively high value product and potential adulterants (flours of cheaper grains or seeds) are visually identical. Adulteration is a risk. In this study (here – open access) portable hyperspectral imaging in the visible near-infrared (VNIR) spectral range (400–1000 nm) was applied as a rapid tool. The concept was proven using quinoa flour adulterated with wheat, rice, soybean, and corn in the range of 0–98% with 2% increments. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were developed, and the best discriminatory model selected. The model was improved by selecting only 13 wavelengths, rather than using the full spectrum, using bootstrapping soft shrinkage. A visualization map was also generated to predict the level of quinoa in the adulterated samples. The study proved the concept of using rapid and portable non-destructive VNIR as a screening tool for quinoa flour adulteration.

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Defra report FA0175 has been added to the links in the Research Outputs resources on our website.  This report gives an inventory of different tools and methods to manage the risk of food fraud and compares them with the factors that drive fraud.  Many FAN members contributed to this study.

https://www.foodauthenticity.global/research

(projects are tabulated in numerical order)

Digital systems and tools are evolving at a rapid pace so some of the specifics in the report are already out of date.  But the fundamentals remain pertinent.  The best food businesses and regulators employ a range of tools, covering everything from people culture to criminal justice records to ingredient specification databases.  The common denominator is a willingness to share information.

John Spink addressed FAN's most recent laboratory Centres of Expertise meeting on this topic and has kindly agreed to make a recording of his presentation available to FAN members.  Click on the image below to watch the recording.

John is a global thought leader on the subject.  This 25 minute talk explores how food companies should decide when and what to test, how testing fits into a holistic supply chain assurance strategy, and how laboratories and food companies can form strategic partnerships by understanding each others' issues and priorities.  It is well worth a watch for both laboratories and their customers.

In a recent column in Food Safety Magazine (free, but sign-up required), supply chain experts John Keogh,  Steve Simske and Louise Manning review the current state of the art in food supply traceability, the drivers for traceability improvement, and take a look into the future.  They discuss the increasing need for claims verification, particularly with regard to ethical production standards, as well as the need for rapid traceability in the event of a recall or safety alert relating to an ingredient.  Digitised traceability is a rapidly evolving field, and this article gives pointers to recommended best practice and guidance documents.

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Thank you again to our member Bruno Sechet for formatting the JRC monthly summary of fraud reports as a graphic and allowing us to share it with you.

The full March 2023 summary from JRC is available here.  We encourage you to sign up for e-mail notifications when these are published.  They are a valuable free resource.

Three different articles have been published in the past month relating to analytical methods to detect fraudulent claims of Halal production.  Each method can be used to disprove a specific aspect of the Halal claim.

One verification requirement is a quick and obvious test for economically motivated adulteration with pork.  Researchers at South-Central Minzu University, China (link – purchase required) used isothermal amplification with CRISPR/Cas12a cleavage to target and measure a porcine-specific gene in nuclear DNA.  Use of nuclear DNA gave a linear calibration in a 25-minute point-of-use test allowing quantitation down to 5% of added pork.

Halal production also mandates the segregation of pork to avoid cross-contamination.  Detection methods are also needed that are sensitive enough to identify segregation failure.  Researchers from the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (link – open access) reported a novel isothermal amplification technique, Polymerase Spiral Reaction, of mitochondrial DNA.  They reported good sensitivity, with a 65-minute point-of-use assay able to detect contamination down to 0.5% of pork in beef.

A third aspect is dilution with meat which has not been Halal slaughtered.  A perennial problem in many countries is the inclusion of meat from animals which died prior to their planned slaughter; termed “casualty animals” in Europe or “carrion meat” (or “tiren”)  in SE Asia.  A team from the National Research and Innovation Agency, Indonesia (Link – purchase required) have published a review of chemical, biochemical and physical markers that can be used to distinguish carrion meat from slaughtered meat. A panel of 14 parameters were selected that could form the basis of an Indonesian national standard.  They include malachite green-H2O2, correlated protein with meat texture, peroxiredoxin-6, blood biochemistry, blood pH, capacitance value, meat colour, Warner-Bratzler shear force, blood loss variation, meat quality, water holding capacity (WHC), resistance value, E. coli load, and coliform load.

 Photo by Syed F Hashemi on Unsplash

The authors of a recent study used LC/Q-ToF MS to profile the lipid composition (di- and triacylglycerols, DAGs and TAGs) of different edible oils.

From these profiles they have proposed a panel of 27 lipids that can be measured as a routine authenticity verification of camelina oil, hemp oil and flax (linseed) oil.  They have also identified 6 lipids that can be used as markers for adulteration of these oils with either sunflower, rapeseed or soybean oil.

The full article, with details of the markers, is available here (purchase required)

 Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

This presentation by Tabatha Hambidge (Research Scientist at the National Measurement Laboratory, LGC) provides an overview of the analysis of novel foods for the presence of CBD, which covers:

• What is CBD?
• How is CBD obtained?
• How does CBD differ from other cannabinoids that are controlled?
• How can we test for the presence of CBD in food supplements and other consumer products?

The e-seminar is intended for individuals working in laboratories that are testing CBD, the food industry and those involved with the UK official control system.

The production of this e-seminar was co-funded by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Defra, the Food Standards Agency, Food Standards Scotland and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, BEIS via the Government Chemist, under the Joint Knowledge Transfer Framework for Food Standards and Food Safety Analysis.

This e-seminar has also been added to the Training section of this website.

 The recording for this webinar, which was held on 29 March 2023, is now available. .

A proof of concept study has been published that successfully used electrical capacitance measurement as a rapid, low cost, non-destructive test to verify the authenticity of edible oils.

 The authors, from the Singapore Agency for Science Technology and Research, report that they could directly screen for adulteration of Extra Virgin Olive Oil by capturing the differences in the dielectric properties of mixed oils. It exploits the different dielectric constants of different fatty acids.  The sensor system displayed a fast response (100 ms) and low detection limits for different adulterants (olive oil (32.8%), canola oil (19.4%), soy oil (10.3%) and castor oil (1.7%)), making it suitable for high-throughput or in-line screening. A low-cost automated system prototype demonstrated the possibility of scaling up this proof of concept for inline integration.  It was configured with a simple red (fail) or green (pass) LED display.

 The full open-access article is available here

The Food Fraud Prevention Academy is a group run out of Michegan State University by Prof John Spink, one of FAN's Advisory Board members.  The Academy offer a number of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) in the fields of Food Fraud Prevention.  They have recently added a free course in Advanced Criminology

https://foodfraudpreventionthinktank.com/courses/food-fraud-prevention-advanced-criminology-mooc-ffca/

This new course provides an overview of Advanced Criminology and an introduction to the Food Fraud Incident Template. It was developed after a request from the private and public sectors because of the need for a standardized template and publicly available training.

The foundation of this course is the Food Fraud Incident Template, which is a simple survey that helps gather complete information – or clearly identifies what information is missing, unavailable, or unknowable.

The template is based on criminology concepts which are covered in other MOOCs from the Academy, including Intelligence Analysis, Food Document Fraud, and the Food Fraud Suspicious Activity Report (FFSAR).  The topic was developed during  INTERPOL/ Europol Operation OPSON meetings over the past five years.

The term Point of Contact (POC) testing relates to a mode of analytical testing that can be conducted at the point of sampling, with a minimal requirement for analyst training, providing easily interpreted results in real-time.

This e-seminar provides an overview of POC testing, describes the range of analytical techniques that have been adopted, and lists examples of current and emerging devices for use with POC testing; It has been added to the e-seminars part of the Training section.

The e-seminar is intended for individuals working in academia, the food industry and those involved with the UK official control system.

The production of this e-seminar was funded by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Food Standards Agency, Food Standards Scotland and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, BEIS, via the Government Chemist, under the Joint Knowledge Transfer Framework for Food Standards and Food Safety Analysis. Cofunding was provided by the Scottish Government's National Transition Training Fund programme in collaboration with the Manufacturing Skills Academy at the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland.