Early Detection of Food Fraud and Adulteration
EMA or Economically motivated adulteration is a phenomenon where someone takes out or leaves out valuable ingredients from food intentionally. Food fraud and adulteration occur when someone adds any substance to the food in order to increase its value or appear better. Food fraud is the most common type of EMA that the FDA deals with on a regular basis. Experts estimated that food fraud affects 1% of the food industry globally at a cost of around $15-$40 billion each year. Food fraud is not only an economic issue but majorly leads to major health issues. Scientists all over the world have been delving into the possibilities offered by Agrigenomics based research, that helps in better production of crops and livestock.
Common Examples of Food Fraud
The most common example of food fraud is honey and maple syrup irrespective of their purity labels. Multiple unscrupulous companies mix in cheaper sweeteners like rice syrup, corn syrup, etc which in turn lowers production costs and increased margins. Olive oil is yet another example where companies dilute expensive extra virgin oils with cheap vegetable oils. Coming to seafood, companies cheaper variants while charging customers top dollar. One example could be selling rockfish for red snappers. In the case of spices, companies bulk up plant stems, etc and mix them with saffron. They also use dyes in spices to attain coloring. Lead-based and industrial dyes can cause cancer and are found in turmeric, chili powder, and cumin. In the case of instant formulas, there was a case reported in 2008 where Chinese manufacturers added melamine which is a synthetic chemical found in plastic in infant formulas. This resulted in kidney failure in babies and over 300,000 illnesses were reported with over 50,000 hospitalizations and a few deaths. Manufacturing of low-quality vodka and spurious alcohol is another persistent problem in many countries.
Detection of Food Fraud
Food fraud detection requires continuous adaptation since people change their methods of committing fraud to avoid past regulatory actions. Monitoring the food market is absolutely essential for early detection. For identifying newer instances of food fraud and adulteration and figuring ways to combat it, information on EMA is exchanged with multiple federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, and the National Oceanic, and Atmospheric Administration. Collaborations with multiple international regulatory bodies for detection and combating adulteration, and food frauds, especially around imported products.
Early Research: For spotting trends and instances of adulteration, information has to be collected beforehand from news articles, databases, science publications, government academics, and other sources. These can be detected through FDA inspections and regular creation and testing of new tools to help the cause.
Sampling assignments: Detecting food frauds can also be done via routine sampling assignments. For instance, in 2016-2017, routine sampling of imported palm oil was done for the presence of Sudan dyes which are highly cancerous for human beings and illegal to be used in food. These red-colored dyes were found in over 16% of the tested palm oil. Thus, putting violative products and manufacturing units on an import alert helps in preventing future possibilities of allowing illegal products within countries.
In a Nutshell
For checking whether adulteration and food fraud has occurred, there are multiple methods for identifying the unique factors in food. Food analytical chemistry studies every chemical component in food, be it how tiny, and helps in identifying frauds when suspicious compositions are found. Along with this, biology methods such as DNA sequencing are also important. It helps in building a DNA library that offers the DNA Barcode for plant or fish species and has been helpful for identifying species substitution effectively. Food fraud and detections once found can lead to major fines and the uprooting of an entire manufacturing unit if repercussions are severe.
