What are Processors doing to combat Food Fraud?
Economically Motivated Adulteration (EMA) – otherwise known as Food Fraud – can be committed in many ways, including mislabeling, product substitutions, or product adulteration. There are no shortages of reports of this type of fraud with stories of sugar being added to honey, lower quality vegetable oil being misrepresented as extra virgin olive oil or horse meat being sold as beef being common in the popular press.
It may be tempting to think that because our food supply chain is so large and complex that some of these incidents occur simply through errors. If this were the case, we would often find a more expensive ingredient substituted for a lower quality one – and yet this is rarely found to happen.
In our article in the Oct/Nov issue of Food Safety Magazine, we asked processors what they were doing to combat food fraud.
As you can see in the full article, there were varying levels of concern about food fraud throughout different processor types and processors in the US and Canada seemed to be less concerned (or perhaps had better control) than those suppliers and processors outside of the US/Canada.
The processor vertical that reported a different response was Spices and Ingredients where we saw a much higher level of concern than in other food areas. It has been known that this market has had a history with EMA with many cases of substitutions and alterations. And “spices” are not a food type but a broad category with a far larger and more global supply chain than what most other processors deal with. This complexity provides many more “touch points” that are very difficult to track providing ample opportunities for someone tamper with a product.
When we asked about the testing that processors are doing, most reported that they are not testing or doing limited testing with the most common control being to deal only with known and trusted suppliers and make sure that they have Certificates of Analysis (CoA) from each of those suppliers.
Consistent to what we heard from Spices and Ingredient processors about risk, these processors are doing far more testing than other verticals and using more varied types of analytical tests.
Food fraud is not new, and it is not going to be eliminated any time soon. As supply chains get longer, more global and more complex there will be ever more opportunities for food fraud to occur and food companies will have to remain vigilant.
Find out more in the full article – Economically Motivated Adulteration: What Are Processors Doing to Combat Food Fraud? http://bit.ly/34raGxm