Issue #36 2022-05-02
An insider's view of the Abbott factory, background checks and the taste of the metaverse
Welcome to The Rotten Apple, an inside view of food integrity for professionals, policy-makers and purveyors. Subscribe for weekly insights, latest news and emerging trends in food safety, food authenticity and sustainable supply chains.
Background Checks, Wonka Bars and Horse Traders…
Resources and Links: Abbott insider confessions, free training and food safety posters
The FAO Food Fraud Report (the interesting bits)
Just for fun; taste the metaverse
Food fraud incidents and horizon scanning updates from the past week
Hello everyone,
Canola country was buzzing when I visited the Riverina growing region of Australia last week. Rain has been good and everyone was preparing to plant.
Canola might be just the thing to grow this year... Indonesia landed a major blow to the already suffering edible oil market this week, by banning exports of palm oil. With sunflower oil supplies almost depleted from the Ukraine war and palm oil supplies now in jeopardy, it feels like canola might be the only oil we can rely on this year.
Welcome to Issue 36 of The Rotten Apple. If you’re wondering where the audio has gone, it’s now available to paid subscribers. A paid subscription also gets you access to the food fraud incident reports and horizon scanning updates, plus downloadable compilations of past issues and an online index of previous topics.
Now is the time to sign up for a paid subscription, our intro offer of 15% off expires on Friday. Subscriptions are company-expense approved and tax-deductible*.
This issue contains an analysis of the FAO Food Fraud 2022 report. The overall assumptions of the report troubled me…. But I found a few super-interesting tidbits about the regulatory aspects of cross-border food e-commerce.
Also this week, the idiot who endangered kids with counterfeit Wonka bars…. would you believe he has been caught doing the same thing before? Plus two awesome free resources and a not-nice insider’s view of the Abbott baby food factory in Michigan. And the taste of the metaverse.
This issue ends with food fraud incidents and horizon scanning news, which is now behind a paywall. Sorry, not sorry, this girl’s gotta eat!
Thanks for being here,
Karen
P.S. Need more info about paid subscriptions? Click here. Or….
*probably 😉
Food Fraud
Background Checks, Wonka Bars and Horse Traders…
A background check is an investigation into the past activities of business owners and operators. In the context of food fraud prevention, background checks are important but easily overlooked.
When you – as a food business – purchase raw materials, ingredients or finished food products you are vulnerable to food fraud in two different ways. (1) Your supplier might accidentally be supplying you with fraudulent product (2) Your supplier might be deliberately defrauding you.
To control for the former, you can assess your supplier’s systems and procedures to make sure they have good food fraud prevention programs. But these controls won’t help you if your supplier is behaving badly.
This is where background checks can help. Sadly, it’s not uncommon for food fraud perpetrators to repeat their crimes, even after they have been caught. For example, one of the men responsible for some of the horse-to-beef fraud in Europe’s 2013 “Horsegate” scandal had been convicted for fraudulent horsemeat trading offences six years before, in 2007. After he got out of jail he set up a new company to do the same thing again. He called the new company ‘Draap’ which is the Dutch word for horse, spelt backwards. And he was caught again; convicted by French courts for false labelling offences perpetrated in 2012 and 2013. Now, Spanish courts are hearing evidence from investigations conducted in 2017 which allegedly implicate the same man in fraudulent horsemeat trading in 2016 and 2017.
That’s pretty bad, I but think this next example is actually worse. Remember the counterfeit Wonka bars in the United Kingdom two months ago? Would you believe that the man responsible had done it before? Yep. He was also prosecuted for selling counterfeit Wonka bars in 2016.
The bars contained unlabelled hazelnut paste, a potentially deadly allergen. Last month, the court heard that he had been warned about such allergens and their risks at least SIX times by food safety officers in relation to his previous activities.
In short: 🍏 Background checks are an important strategy for food fraud prevention 🍏 Criminals and criminally idiot people like the Wonka bar guy and the horse meat guy perpetrate food fraud multiple times, even after they have been caught 🍏
Resources and Links
Free posters from the US FDA
This page has a huge list of downloadable, printable posters to assist retail workers with food safety. Thanks, FDA.
Abbott’s Whistleblower’s Statement
Abbott’s baby formula recall is still big news, with commentators asking why the FDA took so long to act. Bill Marler, a personal injury lawyer recently shared a document that shows just how bad the food safety culture at their Michigan facility was.
A free training video on food fraud and food defence
This free video includes useful information about US regulations for food defence for US companies and exporters to the USA. The video is by Eurofins, with whom I have no financial affiliation.
https://www.eurofinsus.com/assurance/food/resources/webinars/food-fraud-and-food-defense/
Food Fraud
The FAO’s regulatory report (including a few interesting bits!)
The report
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), together with a USA school of food law, set out to create a background paper on international and national regulatory strategies to counter food fraud. If you are a food fraud nerd (like me!) you might want to read it.
Frustratingly, the report is written from the position that “there needs to be a coherent and encompassing legal strategy for food fraud”. But that underlying assumption just doesn’t bear up to scrutiny. The authors acknowledge that, from a legal perspective, food fraud encompasses a lot of different things. And, as they say in their report, fraud itself is a crime in almost every country and usually has a definition wide enough to include food fraud.
There are major challenges with defining food fraud under a single encompassing definition, and this is discussed at length in the report. The report calls for a legal definition for food fraud that is agreed by “everyone” internationally – but who exactly would agree, and how would that agreement be achieved? They don’t say. The FAO’s own Codex food fraud working group has come up with a definition, but the authors don’t seem to endorse it. Maybe it’s not “legal” enough?
Perhaps instead it would be better to acknowledge that different types of food fraud need different definitions and different legal approaches?
The authors assert that “doing nothing is not an option” (p 59*) and say that something must be done to maintain consumer and stakeholder confidence in the food system. This assertion implies that current legal frameworks are not effective. I would argue that laws are generally okay, rather it’s the enforcement of such laws that is lacking.
The report’s main conclusion is
“national governments need to act and cooperate, if for no other reason than to maintain consumer trust in the safety of their food and in their government.”
Yup.
Interesting Bits (Three)
(1) Legal frameworks for online marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba are significantly different between China and Europe. On platforms like Amazon, it is third parties that offer food for consumers to buy. Amazon facilitates the trade, but you could argue that Amazon itself is not a food supplier. This puts them outside the legal obligations of food suppliers in most countries.
If food fraud is perpetrated using an online marketplace like Amazon or Alibaba, where does the regulatory buck stop?
China’s food safety law recognises the differences between the online marketplaces (‘platforms’) and the food businesses that use them to sell food. China’s laws require the platforms to keep a register of food retailers; verify they have the correct permits; and define their food safety responsibilities. The platforms must report and/or ban retailers who are accused of food safety issues or food fraud. In the event of a problem, consumers are entitled to obtain the contact details of food suppliers and if the platform doesn’t provide the correct contact details, the platform becomes jointly liable for damages caused to consumers (p 38).
In Europe it’s different. Online platforms are treated as information service providers and EU law prevents such providers from being obliged to monitor the information they transmit. However, the platforms do still have to take action if they are informed of non-compliant food products on their platforms. Unlike in China, they don’t become jointly liable for harm caused to consumers (p 38).
(2) Mystery shopping is a tool used by enforcement authorities in the European Union and China to monitor foodstuffs that are purchased from foreign countries by consumers (p 50).
(3) Alibaba (the large Chinese online marketplace) and Italy have signed a memorandum of understanding regarding protected geographical indications (GI). Under this agreement, Italian authorities report sales that infringe GI rules to Alibaba (p 36, Box 2).
*page numbers referenced throughout are the pdf page number, not the number in the document footer.
🍏 The report: https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb9035en 🍏
Just for Fun
Your Mission If You Choose To Accept It…
If you live in the USA, your mission is to find out what the metaverse tastes like by purchasing a pixel flavoured Coke.
Yes, you read that right, Coca Cola designed a drink that tastes like the metaverse. It’s called Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte and it will be available in May. Early verdicts are: “Yuck!”
The drink first appeared in the online game Fortnite. Coke claims it’s the first flavour “born in the metaverse”. Pepsico has also promoted snack brands and carbonated drinks in online games.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/coca-cola-creations-zero-sugar-byte-launch
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud incidents, horizon scanning updates, plus a link to the audio version…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Rotten Apple to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.