The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act passed into law on 23 March 2023. It is a major step in unlocking growth and innovation in new technologies, reinforcing food security in the face of climate change and ensuring England becomes a world-leader in agri-food innovation. The Act will set in motion changes to allow farmers to grow crops which are drought and disease resistant, reduce use of fertilisers and pesticides, and help breed animals that are protected from catching harmful diseases. Precision breeding involves using technologies such as gene editing to adapt the genetic DNA of organisms – creating beneficial traits in plants that through traditional, breeding would take decades to achieve. This enables scientists to safely create foods that are more flexible, adaptable and plentiful for years to come.

Read the Defra Press Release and the BBC article

  The Scottish Food Crime & Incidents Unit (SFCIU) is a branch within Food Standards Scotland (FSS) which takes the lead role in the investigation of food crime. It has published its Control Strategy 2022-25 in conjunction with the NFCU (National Food Crime Unit) and was informed by the UK’s Food Crime Strategic Assessment, which FSS (Food Standards Scotland) developed with the FSA (Food Standards Agency). It outlines the food crime priorities and actions being taken to prevent food crime, detect and deter criminality and prosecute offenders. The Control Strategy looks to manage the threat of food crime and set out a clear path in what is a complex and challenging area. This work assessed information and intelligence from a range of sources and was supported by contributions from partner agencies and industry. It draws on the Divert, Deter, Detect and Disrupt framework, as utilised by the Scottish Government in their Serious Organised Crime (SOC) strategy, and which has been adopted by FSS to outline the key strategic objectives in the approach to tackling food crime.

You can download the Food Crime Strategy document here

The NFCU (National Food Crime Unit) part of the Food Standards Agency is investigating allegations of mislabelling of the origin of pork and sometimes selling rotten meat to retailers at least up to the end of 2020. Meat produced by the supplier, as yet unnamed, is reported to have ended up in products such as ready meals, quiches, sandwiches and other produce sold to the UK major retailers. The alleged supply chain fraud was investigated by the journal the "Farmers Weekly".

Read the article here  

In addition, please looked at the LinkedIn entry about this fraud as it discusses the significance of it to food businesses and "What It Means For Me".

In our March 2023 Newsletter, we have published the following articles:

- A new FAN Open Data Project.                                                                                                                                                                                                - Agreement on a Framework for a Coordinated Response from Centres of Expertise to Food and Feed Fraud Incidents/Investigations.                              - 2023 Call for New Centres of Expertise.                                                                                                                                                                                  - An Interlaboratory Trial of a Mass Spectrometry Method for Meat Species Determination.                                                                                                    - New EU Food Project - TRUSTFOOD.                                                                                                                                                                                    - BRCGS - START Programme.                                                                                                                                                                                                - CoE Profile -  SGS United Kingdom Ltd.                                                                                                                                                                                  -Tools to Mitigate the Risk of Being a Victim of Food Fraud.                                                                                                                                                      - Foods Most Reported as Fraudulent - 2022 Data, FoodChain ID.                                                                                                                                          - Food Authenticity Network 2022 Annual Summary.

You can download the Newsletter here

This poster style document is a 2022 summary of all the news about our membership and users of the website, our activities in global standards organisations and national and international events. It summarises the new content put on the website in terms of news items and events, also a framework document for CoEs to respond to food fraud incidents, a new food fraud definitions page, and a Partners page and Standardisation page.

You can download the Annual Summary here

Under EU legislation, raw beef sold chilled, frozen or minced has to declare the country/countries where the animal was born, reared, slaughtered and butchered. Therefore, developing methods to verify the origin of beef is important both to enforce the legislation and prevent fraud. This study was undertaken and funded as part of the EU Project TRACE. Two hundred and twenty seven samples of authentic beef were collected from 13 regions in 8 European countries, and their  hydrogen (²H/¹H), carbon (¹³C/¹²C), nitrogen (¹⁵N/¹⁴N), and sulphur (³⁴S/³²S) isotope ratios determined. The results show the potential of this technique to detect clustering of samples due to specific environmental conditions in the areas where the beef cattle were reared. In particular, they highlighted statistical differences between coastal and inland regions, production sites at different latitudes, regions with different geology, and different farming systems related to whether the animals were consuming primarily C3 - or C4-based diets or a mixed one. 

Read the full open access paper

 This review describes all the available DNA methods, which can detect pork in foods, as a basis for Halal verification. The review describes the following assays: Singleplex and Multiplex PCR, PCR-RAPD and PCR-RFLP, Real Time-PCR, DNA-Barcoding, Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), Biosensor - optic and electrochemical, and CRISPR/Cas12. It discusses the detail probes, primers etc as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Read the full open-access paper

Compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) of food products is a relatively new and novel technique used to authenticate food and detect adulteration. This paper reviews recent applications of CSIA to authenticate the origin of different foods. CSIA δ¹³C values are widely used to verify geographical origin, organic production, and adulteration. The δ¹⁵N values of individual amino acids and nitrate fertilizers have proven effective to authenticate organic foods, while δ²H and δ¹⁸O values are useful to link food products with local precipitation for geographical origin verification. CSIA has a stronger analytical advantage for the authentication of food compared to bulk stable isotope analysis, especially for honey, beverages, essential oils, and processed foods.

Read the abstract here

EVOO is a high value edible oil, which is susceptible to adulteration and extension. This study looks at proof of concept for screening EVOO-filled containers non-invasively for adulteration without any sample extraction by capturing the differences in the dielectric properties of mixed oils. The
sensor system displayed a fast response (100 ms) and  detection limits for different adulterants/extenders (refined olive oil (32.8%), rapeseed oil (19.4%), soya oil (10.3%) and castor oil (1.7%)), which is suitable for high-throughput (>60 sample/min) screening. The sensors do not work with metal containers, only plastic ones. Furthermore, a low-cost automated system prototype was tested to of translate the proof of concept for possible scaling up, but further work is required to expand the range of possible adulterants and reduce the detection limits.

Read the full paper here

Consumers are demanding to know the origin of the food they buy, which can have a higher value depending on the origin and whether the food is a PDO (protected denomination of origin), or PGI (protected geographical indication). The elemental fingerprint of food is an efficient way to authenticate its geographical origin. Control laboratories are accredited and properly equipped for elemental analysis, and standardisation and comparability of results is warranted.

Download the Science for Policy Brief here

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published its February 2023 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.

Also included in the Summary are links to two other interesting items, including a study investigating food fraud during Covid-19 and the mitigation strategies applied in UK, and a short documentary on food fraud by CNBC.

You can download the February 2023 Summary here

1. National Food Crime Unit External Review 2022

In June 2018, the Food Standards Agency Board agreed to expand National Food Crime Unit's (NFCU) activities from having a strategic and tactical intelligence capability to a comprehensive response to criminal threats and vulnerabilities, including investigative capabilities. This review of the NFCU ran from June to October 2022. The Review centred on 22 key findings which relate to the themes below:

• The evidenced capability of the Unit to handle intelligence and pursue crime reduction, supported by the professional expertise of its staff, the benefit derived from their existing professional networks within law enforcement and the deep commitment and effort of the Unit’s officers;
• The impact of increasing strategic cohesion between NFCU and the rest of the FSA with regards to the food crime threat;
• The practical challenges of complex fraud investigation, particularly given the absence of key powers, but also the importance of encouraging a more ‘lawfully audacious’ approach;
• The critical contributions of the Unit’s capabilities around sensitive intelligence collection and financial investigation;
• The importance of food-specific domain expertise in understanding and tackling the food crime threat, the external factors which may increase the risk of food crime and the risk that the threat is underestimated by many;
• Areas of potential improvement to service delivery in terms of internal training, intelligence sharing, online investigation tradecraft and the consideration of offender management opportunities.
• The importance of strengthening the Unit’s external influence, relationships and information sharing with the public and private sectors, at home and abroad.

 Read the review report.

2.  Food Fraud Prevention Strategy - A global perspective on testing, monitoring and verification

This paper, by Dr. John W Spink and reviewed by Selvarani Elahi MBE, provides insight into how the food authenticity-related concepts of testing, monitoring, and verification can be applied effectively within the overall framework of food fraud prevention.

Download the free white paper at: https://okt.to/yk9Ixi

This study aims to determine volatile compounds in red wines of Zweigelt and Rondo varieties using HS-SPME/GC-MS (headspace solid-phase microextraction gas chromatography - mass spectrometry), and to find a marker and/or a classification model for the assessment of varietal authenticity. Wines were produced from the two varieties, and 67 volatile compounds were tentatively identified in the test wines. The relative concentrations of volatiles were used as an input data set, divided into two subsets (training and testing), to the support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbor (kNN) algorithms. A subset of 6 volatiles was chosen for evaluation, and it was found that 2 of the volatiles in particular gave an accuracy of 100%. One of the chosen volatiles in Zweigelt wines was absent from the Rondo wines. Further chemometric analysis identified two further volatiles of importance for SVM . The classification model approach needs expanding for mixed varieties, and when the same varietal wines are produced in different geographical locations.

Read the full open access paper

Quinoa, coix seed, wild rice and chickpea have experienced increasing demand globally and have high economic values. Therefore, they are susceptible to substitution. In this study, a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method for rapid detection and authentication of quinoa, coix seed, wild rice and chickpea in composite foods was developed. Specific primers and probes were designed with 2S albumin genes of quinoa, SAD genes of coix seed, ITS genes of wild rice and CIA-2 genes of chickpea as the target genes, and the resulting alleles were of relatively small size (130-360bp). The assay identified the target ingredients with a content below 0.01%. A total of 24 commercially available processed food samples were tested by the qPCR method, and the results indicate that this method is applicable to the detection of ingredients in different matrices, and in highly processed composite foods.

Read the full open access paper

Collagen-based chicken skin is being increasingly used in fat reduced meat products as it has good water retaining properties. This study has identified two unique peptide markers of chicken skin collagen, after extraction, and trypsin digest using LC-MS. The assay has very low detection limits for the two peptide markers. The method was validated by analysing the peptides derived from pork and beef collagen in meat and collagen mixtures. The two chicken collagen peptide markers were not found in either beef or pork collagen, and hence were unique to chicken skin. Further work to make the method quantitative is being undertaken.

Read the full open access paper

Botanical ingredients are high value products, which are used widely in phytomedicines, dietary/food supplements, functional foods, and cosmetics.  Published reports show that a proportion of these botanical ingredients and products are adulterated, and usually, such adulteration is carried out for financial gain, where ingredients are intentionally substituted, diluted, or “fortified” with undisclosed lower-cost ingredients. While some of the adulteration is easily detected with established laboratory assays, the adulterators frequently use sophisticated ways to mimic the visual aspects and chemical composition of the labelled botanical ingredient, in order to deceive the analytical methods that are used for authentication. This review surveys the most common adulterant used for each botanical, and the used approaches for botanical ingredient adulteration, as well as discussing the  appropriate test methods for the detection of the adulteration.

Botanical ingredients at risk of adulteration include, but are not limited to, the essential oils of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia, Lamiaceae), rose (Rosa damascena, Rosaceae), sandalwood (Santalum album, Santalaceae), and tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia, Myrtaceae), plus the extracts of bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus, Ericaceae) fruit, cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon, Ericaceae) fruit, elder (Sambucus nigra, Viburnaceae) berry, eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus, Araliaceae) root, ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba, Ginkgoaceae) leaf, grape (Vitis vinifera, Vitaceae) seed, saw palmetto (Serenoa repens, Arecaceae) fruit, St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum, Hypericaceae) herb, and turmeric (Curcuma longa, Zingiberaceae) root/rhizome.

Read the full open access paper

The common adulterants used in cow milk are water, starch, flour, urea, formalin, sodium hydroxide and cane sugar. Extension of milk with added water is the most common. These adulterants have effect on the nutritional quality of cow milk by decreasing the concentration of ingredients found and wholesomeness of the milk. This review examines the occurence of adulteration, as well as the methods to detect it.

Read the full review paper here

Fish species identification is normally undertaken using DNA barcoding methods. However, it is often useful to have an on-site rapid non-destructive method to verify fish species. In this study, 2 Raman spectrometers (a portable Raman spectrometer and a benchtop confocal Raman spectrometer) were used and compared for their performance to identify 11 species of fish (4 species of Salmonidae and 7 species of non-Salmonidae).  Supervised chemometric/machine learning classification models were constructed based on a hierarchical classification principle to develop this 11-class identification. Both Raman spectrometers were able to differentiate Salmonidae from non-Salmonidae fish with close to 100% accuracy. To further identify the fish to species level, the portable Raman spectrometer provided better accuracy (i.e., 93% and 93% accuracy for the Salmonidae group and non-Salmonidae identification, respectively) compared to the benchtop Raman spectrometer (i.e., 90% and 84% accuracy for the Salmonidae group and non-Salmonidae identification, respectively). The overall non-destructive analytical time was only 5 minutes.

Read the full open access paper here

Identifying the extension of fruit juices with water is a great challenge. In this study, Brazilian researchers used the isotope ratio (¹⁸O/¹⁶O) as the authenticity marker for the addition of exogenous water in grape juice. The development and validation of the assay were performed using Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS), and the effect of temperature and evaporation of δ¹⁸O in experimental juices was evaluated, to determine their reference values.The influence of the juice industrial production process on ¹⁸O values was verified, and commercial juices were evaluated in relation to the reference values of  the addition of water. The temperature and evaporation parameters did not influence the results of the ¹⁸O of the juice, as they presented differences lower than the method uncertainty. The heat exchanger system did not influence the proposed method either. Hence, the reference values for juice is derived from the grape musts, without affecting the interpretation of the final results. The method was tested on 30 commercial samples of whole grape juices, of which 9 had exogenous water, 3 proved to be reconstituted juices, and 18 were considered to have no exogenous water. 

Read the full open access paper

Honey is one of the foods susceptible to extension and adulteration with exogenous sugars. Whereas there is a well established test for C4 sugar (cane or corn based sysrups) adulteration using EA-IRMS (elemental analyser -isotope ratio mass spectrometry), detection of C3 sugar syrups (rice and beet sugar) is more difficult. In this study, an approach combining Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and chemometrics was developed for a rapid screening tool to detect potential adulteration of honey with either rice or corn syrup. A set of 46 authentic and 39 commercial honey samples were collected and adulterated samples of between 1-16% with rice syrup and 3-15% corn syrup were prepared, and their FTIR spectra determined. A single class soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) model was developed on the spectra of the set of commercial and authentic honey samples. The SIMCA model was externally validated with a set of calibration-independent authentic and commercial honey control samples, and those spiked with rice and corn syrups in the 1-16% concentration range. The authentic and commercial honey test samples were correctly predicted with a 88.3% classification rate. High accuracy was also found in predicting the rice and corn syrup spiked samples above 7% concentration range, yielding 97.6% and 94.8% correct classification rates, respectively.  

Read the full open access paper