Issue #60 | Hemp-based Foods | Food Safety and Food Fraud Problems from Cargo Theft | Baking with Wool |
2022-10-17
Hemp-based Foods; Hot or Not?
Cargo Theft: A Food Safety and Food Fraud Problem
News and Resources Roundup
Baking with Wool (Just for Fun)
Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues
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Hi!
This is Issue 60 of The Rotten Apple, your favourite food safety and food fraud newsletter :) A warm welcome to new subscribers and – as always – a huge thank you to those of you who have chosen to support this publication with a paid subscription (find out about paid subscriptions here).
In this issue, you’ll find a brief introduction to hemp-based foods, their benefits and their challenges with respect to safety and regulatory issues. Plus a food supply chain crime issue that seems to be getting worse.
As always I’ve got an ad-free, endorsement-free round-up of international food safety news and resources for you, plus, for paying subscribers, food fraud news (we’re still finding potential problems with horsemeat?!)
Thanks for being part of our growing community of food professionals.
Karen
P.S. If you know someone who would be interested in this newsletter, please share it with them.
Hemp-based Foods; Hot or Not?
Hemp-based foods are made with hemp seeds, hemp flour or hemp oil. Hemp food ingredients come from hemp plants, a crop that is grown worldwide for textiles, fibres and biofuel, as well as for animal and human food.
Hemp belongs to the same species as cannabis and marijuana (Cannabis sativa) but hemp used for food usually has low levels of the psychoactive compound THC (delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the compound that gives marijuana users a ‘high’.
Hot…
Hemp seeds are valued for their nutritional properties, being high in protein, polyunsaturated oils, vitamins and minerals.
The crop is said to be good for organic production as it does not need herbicides.
…Or Not?
On the downside, the global regulatory landscape for hemp foods is very complex. For example, the European Commission has changed the permitted limits for THC twice in 2 years, going from 0.3% to 0.2% in 2020 and then back again last year. In Australia, the limit is 1% THC for hemp seeds used in foods.
Levels of THC can vary from plant to plant and from crop to crop for the same variety, which makes THC analysis of foods very difficult.
Some countries have different rules for different parts of the hemp plant, with seeds and seed oils generally more accepted for use in foods compared to flowers, leaves, sprouts and roots.
Health concerns have been raised by researchers who found some categories of hemp foods in Europe had high levels of THC, especially hemp tea and hemp seed oil. They recommended that hemp-based foods should not be consumed by people younger than 18 years due to safety concerns.
While hemp seeds have a significant amount of protein compared to other seeds like chia or linseed, the strong flavour of whole seeds and oil from whole seeds can limit their applications in products that require neutral-flavoured protein sources.
One processor says they have solved this problem by using only hemp seed hearts for protein. Hemp seed hearts are seeds with the shells removed, which reduces the amount of tannin, chlorophyll and other flavour compounds in the resulting protein material, which has a pale colour and neutral flavour. However, the process of extracting protein from hemp seed hearts is technically difficult due to their high fat content.
Sources
https://insights.figlobal.com/trends/whats-new-hemp-based-food
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956713521003716
Raymond B, Rouse A (2021) The next meat analogue New Food | Volume 24, Issue 04, pp 50 – 52.
Cargo Theft: A Food Fraud and Food Safety Problem
There is a serious and growing problem of theft of food and beverages from transport vehicles, with the United Kingdom increasingly at risk.
A transport industry association has received more cargo theft reports from the United Kingdom than any other European country in the past 18 months. The president of the association (The (Europen) Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA)) says that the rising cost of food is a major contributor.
“Food theft is going through the roof, and this wasn’t the situation three or four years ago. You can see criminals are targeting products that people need for their daily life and not products that are nice to have. When you are hungry, you’re not stealing an iPhone.”
Some of the foods that have been stolen in the United Kingdom in the past 18 months are large consignments of tinned tuna, infant formula, chewing gum, cheese, milk, pistachio nuts, whisky, vodka and gin.
While stolen products often end up being sold in online marketplaces like eBay and Facebook, they are also channelled back into legitimate supply chains. An officer from the United Kingdom’s National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NavCIS) says they can even end up in supermarkets. There have been examples, he says, where a supermarket representative has had to ask a competitor’s store “‘Why are you stocking this? Because you shouldn’t have it, this is our stuff [brand]’.”
The thefts are perpetrated by organised crime groups who arrange for goods to be stolen from trucks (lorries) by cutting holes in the soft sides of the trailers while they are parked at night. Or the thieves drive off with an entire trailer after attaching it to their own vehicle. In other cases, shipping containers are fraudulently claimed at the port. The criminal groups make use of contacts inside industry to divert some or all of the stolen food into legitimate supply chains.
The president of TAPA, Thorsten Neumann, gives the example of a truckload of parmesan cheese that is stolen and then sold to a legitimate food manufacturer to be used as an ingredient. He says food shipments like this are usually offered at prices a little lower than market prices, but not significantly lower, because that would make potential buyers suspicious.
In the United Kingdom, the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service receives 600 notifications of food and drink theft each year.
Food safety risks arise with any theft of perishable foods, because the stolen food may not be stored properly by the thieves. Chilled foods like cheese and fish pose obvious risks, but bulk loads of foods like nuts are also a food safety problem if stolen. Nuts that are not stored correctly can experience mould growth which leads to mycotoxin formation, rendering the nuts unsafe.
Takeaways
No food business is immune to the effects of cargo theft, and even large retailers have been ‘caught out’ after inadvertently receiving stolen goods.
Some food fraud ‘experts’ claim that you can recognise stolen or fraudulent foods because their prices are too good to be true. This is incorrect. Stolen foods can be sold at, or close to, usual market prices.
Food manufacturers and food businesses that are approached by new suppliers should be aware that the ingredients or products they are offering for sale could have been stolen or diverted from their intended recipients.
Stolen food and beverages pose food safety risks due to the possibility of incorrect storage conditions.
The main source for this story is:
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Be entertained (and informed) by the incredible story of a $10 million food heist, in which dozens of entire truckloads of Californian almonds were stolen from American highways in a matter of months. An Audible podcast. Highly recommended.
News and Resources
Our news and resources section is expertly curated (by me! 😎) and free from filler, fluff and promotional junk.
This week:
new rules for recycled food packaging,
two unusual food safety alerts,
a new handbook for nut processing,
a source found for the deadly outbreak in Gambia,
and more.
Click the preview box below to access it.
Baking with Wool (Just for Fun)
Watch a talented creator ‘bake’ a super-cute miniature chocolate cake with wool in less than 1 minute.
What you missed in last week’s email
How Just Nine Crops Controlled By Four Companies Feed The Human Race
How Oat Milk is Made
Just for fun: a delicious ash-tray
News and Resources Roundup + Food Fraud News
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, incident reports, and emerging issues, plus 🎧 audio 🎧 so you can catch up while on the go
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
Spice leader says developed countries have unrealistic safety and purity standards for spices
In an interview with an Indian news outlet, Ramkumar Menon, chairman of the World Spice Organisation, complained that spice safety standards are becoming too stringent and “in some cases, unrealistic”,