Fish species substitution is a major global fraud problem. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is widely appreciated, especially smoked or as fillets, and is a high value  fish in many export markets, and thus vulnerable to substitution. Chinese researchers have developed a real-time DNA assay based on isothermal  amplification (LAMP-real time fluorescence loop-mediated isothermal amplification) of a specific section of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, which is sensitive, and more rapid than normal PCR thermocycling. The assay was specific to Atlantic salmon without any cross-reactivity with 11 non-targeted salmonoid species. It was tested on 30 commercial salmon products collected in local markets in Nanjing, and only six were found to contain Atlantic salmon.

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 FSAI's annual report covers enforcement, inspections, sampling, recalls, Brexit, and food fraud. On its 2019 food fraud activities, the RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) dealt with 3,997 events, of these just 34 were notified by Ireland. Some 21 notifications were about food which had originated in Ireland, and 13 were related to foods in distribution in the country. During 2019, authorised officers from the FSAI, other state regulatory authorities, and official agencies conducted 52 investigations where breaches of food law and food fraud were suspected. Ireland published four cases relating to alcohol, beef, and fish in the European Commission’s Administrative Assistance and Cooperation/Food Fraud Network database. Eleven EU AAC FFN notifications were processed. Returns submitted by Ireland to Europol as part of Operation Opson included seizures of food of animal origin such as meat and dairy, and alcohol.

Read the article or FSAI's 2019 Annual Report

Researchers at Queens University Belfast’s Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) were called in to support an investigation after a major food-poisoning incident in Uganda in March 2019, which killed five people and saw hundreds hospitalised. The incident was linked to a specialist nutritious food - Super Cereal, a fortified wheat and soya product supplied under the World Food Programme (WFP) to around 5 million people every year. The supply to affected area was suspended pending the investigation. The DNA of jimsonweed, a plant in the nightshade family, was found which corroborated the presence of high levels of tropane alkaloids in the suspended batches of Super Cereal. However, a second outbreak occurred in a refugee camp in the North of Uganda, where the Super Cereal going into this region was from a completely different supply chain. So the WFP had to take the decision to suspend all supplies of Super Cereal. The QUB team, however, suspected that some form of fraud had occurred, and were able to show that both outbreaks were caused by contaminated ingredients from the same batches produced in Turkey.

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In some countries, honey from native, non-domesticated species, such as Asian Apis dorsata and Apis cerana commands a much higher price than honey from the colonies of the domesticated honeybee Apis mellifera, and therefore is more vulnerable to fraud. Slovenian researchers have developed DNA  markers from a single copy ANT (adenine nucleotide translocase) gene using exon-primed intron-crossing (EPIC) primers and a double restriction protocol to obtain sequence information, which can identify the three bee species in honey. The method was developed using small extracts from 25 honeybee tissue samples and 21 honeybee products, and can be used for other bee products such as royal jelly.

Read the article or the full scientific paper

Food Standards Scotland’s Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit (SFCIU) have highlighted four sectors as priorities, which have been targeted and continue to be targeted by criminals committing food fraud:-

- Red meat: fraudulently tagged livestock, stolen livestock, illegal slaughter and substitution of product, false declaration of origin or durability date.

- Fish: substitution by cheaper species or lower quality fish, misdescription of origin especially for salmon, import of illegally treated tuna, fraudulent use of official certification in UK, and impact of Brexit on Scottish supply chain.

- Shellfish: illegally harvested shellfish, misrepresentation of quality and origin of shellfish, falsification of registration and landing documents, and   use of modern slavery and exploitation for harvesting shellfish.

- Alcoholic drinks: counterfeit branded spirits and wine, import or smuggling of fake vodka, production of illicit alcohol, and import and use of material and equipment to produce imitation alcohol products.

Read the article here

Olive oil, especially extra virgin oilive oil (EVOO), is highly valued for its organoleptic and nutritional qualities. In this study, more than 200 monovarietal (Koroneiki) EVOO samples were collected from the main Greek olive oil producing regions. They were analysed using Flow Injection Analysis-Magnetic Resonance Mass Spectrometry (FIA-MRMS), which directly injects the oil into the mass spectrometer, to determine a metabolite profile. In parallel, the same oils were analysed using an LC-Orbitrap MS (Liquid Chromatograpy-Mass Spectrometry) platform to verify the efficiency of the method, as well as a tool to increase the identification confidence of the proposed markers.  The results obtained by FIA-MRMS analysis generated improved projection and prediction models in comparison to those of the more established LC-MS methodology. Also with FIA-MRMS, more statistically significant compounds and chemical classes were identified as quality and authenticity markers, which were associated with specific authenticity issues, i.e. geographical region, cultivation practice, and production procedures. 

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Cocoa beans are the raw material for chocolate and chocolate products. There are many authenticity aspects of cocoa in terms of its varietal and geographic origin, and the composition and quality of chocolate, especially substitution of cocoa butter,  that require verification. This review by Spanish researchers gives an  update on the progress toward the authenticity, traceability and sustainability of cocoa products.

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Vanilla is a high value flavouring used in ice cream, desserts and confectionery, and mainly grown in Madagascar. Synthetic vanillin and biovanillin (produced by fermentation) are cheaper. By using SIRA (stable isotope ratio analysis) to look at the δ13C, it is possible to distinguish between the three types of vanilla flavouring. The method was tested on market samples of yoghurt and ic cream. Also FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared) spectoscopy with chemometric analysis was calibrated with authentic samples of black pepper so that it was possible to detect the adulteration of ground black pepper with black pepper husk and defatted spent material. The research was undertaken as a Ph.D registered at the Technical University of Denmark, but carried out at the Danish National Food Institute and IGFS - Queens University Belfast.  

Read the article or the Ph.D thesis 

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is proposing additional record keeping requirements for a list of "high risk" foods under the US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which is intended to make it easier to rapidly and effectively track the movement of a food to prevent or mitigate a foodborne illness outbreak. The Food Traceability List (FTL) identifies the foods which would be covered by the new rule. The additional recordkeeping requirements would apply not only to foods specifically listed on the FTL, but also to foods that contain foods on the list as ingredients.

Read the FDA's Proposal here

Mooncakes are a traditional Chinese bakery product eaten during the moon watching Autumn Festival. Chinese police have arrested 40 people suspected of producing and selling fake mooncakes of a well known Hong Kong brand. The investigation started when it was discovered that this brand of mooncakes were being sold 50-70% cheaper on-line. This eventually led them to a production line in Zhangzhou, which employed 100 people producing the fake mooncakes 24/7, where over 12,000 boxes of the fakes were seized. Police said the authentic counterparts of the seized mooncakes are worth over 30 million yuan (US$4.4 million). The investigation is still on-going.

Read the article here

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) publishes a monthly Food Fraud Summary summarising food fraud incidents and investigations from around the world. The September 2020 Summary has just been published. In particular, a large scale horse and donkey meat fraud has been investigated in Colombia, where horses and donkeys, often sick animals, were slaughtered and adulterated with chemicals, and sold as beef for school meals. The fraud took place between May 2018 and September 2019, and involved 2-2.5 tonnes of meat each week.

Read the monthly summary here

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) publishes a monthly Food Fraud Summary summarising food fraud incidents and investiations from around the world. The July-August Summary has now been published. It is a more extended document than usual covering the summer months, and highlights in particular a number of wine counterfeiting investigations in Italy, Spain and Bordeaux wines sold in China.

Stable Isotope Ratio (SIRA) analysis is widely used to investigate different authenticity issues from exogenous sugar adulteration to geographic origin. An international project  has developed, quality-tested, and measured isotope–delta values of 10 new food matrix reference materials (RMs) for hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur SIRA measurements. The RMs include (i) two honeys from Canada and tropical Vietnam, (ii) two flours from C3 (rice) and C4 (millet) plants, (iii) four vegetable oils from C3 (olive, peanut) and C4 (corn) plants, and (iv) two collagen powders from marine fish and terrestrial mammal origins. The RMs were collaboratively tested by 8 laboratories to obtain consensus values and measurement uncertainties. These new RMs should facilitate mutual compatibility of stable isotope data if accepted normalisation procedures are applied and documented.

Read the abstract and supporting data here

True cinnamon (Cinnamon verum) is a high value spice only grown in Sri Lanka. It can often be adulterated with the lower priced Cinnamon cassia. This can have food safety implications because Cinnamon cassia contains high levels (1%) of coumarin, whereas true cinnamon has a minimal amount (0.04%) of coumarin. Coumarin is toxic to some animals and certain sensitive humans causing liver and kidney damage. Argentinian researchers have developed a rapid, low cost, non-destructive method based on NIR (Near-infrared diffuse reflectance) spectroscopy and chemometrics to detect the adulteration of true cinnamon.

Read the abstract here

 This paper reports the results of an international cooperative research project to address potential food fraud issues related to rice supplies in China, India, Vietnam and Ghana, and as rice fraud manifests differently in each country, tailored solutions were required. A portable NIR (Near Infra-Red) instrument with chemometrics calibrated to the authentic rice, was used as a fingerprint screening method. Non-conforming or suspicious samples were analysed in a second stage (confirmatory test) using laboratory-based gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) fingerprinting methods, which were developed to differentiate between: high value Basmati rice varieties and their potential adulterants; six Geographic Indicated protected rice varieties from specific regions of China; various qualities of rice in Ghana and Vietnam; as well locally produced and imported rice in Ghana. In addition, an inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICPMS) method was developed to support the Chinese rice varieties methods, as well as a liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOFMS) method for quality differentiation in Vietnam. This two stage approach permits a much higher level of on-site screening of rice samples followed by the laboratory corroborating mass spectrometry analysis to assist decision making in accepting rice supplies. 

Read the abstract here

 Scallops are high value seafood products usually sold without their characteristic shells. Each species differs in its taste and value with the Pecten spp.  scallops attracting higher prices in Europe. German researchers have developed a multiplex real-time PCR method to reliably identify the main commercial scallop species: Pecten spp. (usually King scallop P. maximus), Mizuhopecten yessoensis (Japanese scallop), and Placopecten magellanicus (Atlantic sea scallop). Primers and probes  based on mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene amplifying fragments of 138–198 bp were used, and non-targeted species gave either no fluorescent signal or cycle numbers (Cq) very different from the targeted species. The newly developed assay was tested on commercial samples from German supermarkets and fishmongers accompanied by simultaneous verification through Sanger sequencing, which revealed a high mislabelling rate of 48%, especially for products purchased at fishmongers. 

Read the abstract here

This article in New Food Magazine discusses how Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Whole Gene Sequencing (WGS) can assist in detecting and identifying contamination, and also playing an important role in assuring traceability of food products when combined with blockchain along the supply chain. Technology improvements have meant that NGS and WGS have high throughputs at much lower cost than before, and NGS machine can now be used for WGS as well.

The genomic information derived by these techniques on pathogenic bacterial contamination when combined with data such as the date and place of findings, can help track down the exact sources of contamination and therefore avoid large scale recalls of food products. The role of NGS in obtaining DNA traceability combined with blockchain permits products all the way along the supply chain to be traced back to their original raw materials whether that be plants or animals. 

Read the article here

The main authenticity issues associated with EVOO’s quality involve the organoleptic properties (EVOO or defective), mislabelling of production type (organic or conventional), variety and geographical origin, and adulteration. Greek researchers have reviewed the various "omics" (mainly genomics and metabolomics) using HRMS with various chemometric tools presenting the various workflows to verify critical aspects of olive oil authenticity.

Read the abstract here

The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has commissioned Fera Science Ltd to carry out a review of current methods that are used in the detection and speciation of offal (liver, kidney, heart and lung) in meat preparations and products. Depending on the outcome of the review, which will determine the key requirements for future methods, it is possible that future research may be undertaken. Therefore it is important to look at what existing methods are being used and their advantages or limitations. Fera are therefore interested in responses from all stakeholders in the meat supply chain: food producers, food retailers, government and analytical testing providers and enforcement officers, and have prepared a short survey for completion.

If you would like to participate in the survey follow this link

A project has started in Australia to use a portable Xray fluorescence instrument to give an elemental fingerprint in order to verify that seafood being sold in Australian markets originates in Australian waters. Elemental profiles will need to be determined for each species of seafood and the regions from where they are caught. This will give confidence to consumers that the seafood they purchase will not be fraudulently mislabelled as Australian. The project is being run by the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation and is part of a larger Traceability Grants Program.

Read the article here