Food Authenticity - Capella Innovation

Opportunities, motivations and control measures are defined in this concept as the three main elements of food fraud vulnerability. They can be subdivided into technical opportunities, opportunities in time and place, economic drivers, culture and behavior, as well as technical and managerial control measures.

Food fraud vulnerability threats may originate from both the external and the internal environment of a business which means that several vulnerability factors need to be considered at multiple environmental levels, i.e. the level of the business itself, its suppliers, its customers, the wider chain and at the (inter)national level.

Fraud can simply be described as: a type of criminal activity that can be an abuse of position, or false representation, or prejudicing someone’s rights for personal gain (. Food fraud is defined by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as: “deliberately placing food on the market, for financial gain, with the intention of deceiving the consumer”

Adulteration – adding ingredients like sugar or sweeteners to honey or maple syrup in order to produce a similar taste while adding volume or, in the case of baby formula, adding melamine to reach the desired “protein” count

Dilution – olive oil mixed with other types of oil, wine with grape blends, and fruit juices diluted in water then mixed with other ingredients to produce a similar taste while increasing volume

Mislabelling – examples are cases of horse meat mixed with beef but labeled and sold as beef, organic food being sold but found to have traces of “non-organic” ingredients, and mislabeled seafood being sold in the market.

Capella Innovation can developed for detection and quantification adulterants in commercial foods with a selective Real-Time PCR based method/ Elisa for those following foods.

Top 10 products that are most of food fraud

Fruit juices (particularly pomegranate, orange and apple juice). Fruit juices are susceptible to being watered down before colouring and sweetener is added to make them appear more concentrated. A sorbitol analysis conducted on fruit juice is able to detect some counterfeit products by distinguishing whether the sugar in the juice is naturally occurring or has been artificially added.
Olive oil. Difficulty in assessing the origin and quality of olive oil, combined with lower production in different seasons, makes olive oil a popular food to fake. Up to 80 percent of Italian olive oil is fake. Olive oil may be mixed with other oils such as canola oil or sunflower oil, or presented as virgin or extra virgin when it is in fact of a lesser quality.
Spices (such as oregano, pepper and saffron). Counterfeit spices are one of the oldest types of food fraud. Spices can be “watered down” with other ingredients in an effort to save costs.
Coffee. A growing coffee culture and greater emphasis on single origin and ethically sourced beans has created an incentive for counterfeiters to pass off inferior coffee beans as premium. Coffee may be diluted with cheaper beans, or may be mislabelled completely. In the worst case, it may be packed with ground twigs, leaves or coloured sawdust. However, better technology is now emerging that makes it easier to test the purity of coffee and identify the type of coffee beans present.
Honey and maple syrup. Honey has become more difficult to produce due to numerous factors due to honey bee diseases, warmer climates and higher levels of deforestation. Fraudulent honey and maple syrup can contain added sugars or sweeteners such as corn syrup, as well as antibiotics and heavy metals.
Fish. A recent US study has found that up to one in five pieces of seafood had been mislabelled.
Tea. Like coffee, an increased interest in different varieties of tea has opened up an attractive market for fraudsters. Cheap products can be labelled and passed off as expensive authentic Chinese tea leaves.
Milk. Recent scandals have seen the adulteration of milk through the inclusion of contaminants such as urea, caustic soda and melamine (the latter being a nitrogenous toxic plasticizer that artificially inflated the ‘protein’ count in the milk).
Organic foods. With increased emphasis on promoting foods as “organic”, there has also been an increase in the number of foods that claim to be organic despite containing ingredients that are not considered organic. A studyby the US Department of Agriculture found that over 40% of organic foods sold in the US used pesticides at higher levels than appropriate for organic foods.
Grains. Presents obvious health risks if consumed regularly, and often the difference can only be ascertained by the consumer once the grain has been cooked.
Wine. Adulteration of wine is relatively commonplace. Different grape blends or other chemicals can be added to low-quality wine to give it the appearance of a higher quality product. A recent scandal saw an arrest made in the US after low-quality wine had systematically been relabelled and sold as expensive wines.
Meat. Fake meat has been the subject of a number of controversies. There have been numerous reports of meat that has added water or colouring to make it appear to be a superior product. The background of meat can also be misrepresented. Perhaps most famous was the “horse meat”scandal, where it was revealed that a substantial amount of horse meat had been imported after it had been labelled as beef.