157 | Emerging Trends in Food Fraud | Worst Food Pun of The Week | Rainbow Sprinkles |
Plus, shocking stats for US meat labelled 'Raised without antibiotics'
Four quick bites: Reader response to intrinsic versus extrinsic hazards | Boar’s Head Sanitation Manager spills the dirt | Wurst pun | PFAS in pesticides |
Emerging trends in food fraud (2024);
Food Safety News and Resources;
How rainbow sprinkles are made (just for fun);
Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents.
Hello, dear readers, I hope you’re well,
And a special hello to Melissa and Robert. Robert’s been here since the earliest days of this publication in 2021 and just upgraded to a paid subscription. Melissa joins the ranks of paid subscribers too, joining Yvette from South Africa, Adriana, Nicholas and Jennifer who just renewed their subscriptions 👏👏 Thank you for your support 👏👏 I couldn’t do this without you.
Welcome to Issue 157 of The Rotten Apple. This week’s issue is a food fraud festival - there’s even good news in food fraud - as I explore current food fraud trends in the main part of the newsletter. There’s also lots of news in the weekly food fraud news section for paying subscribers, including a shocking statistic about ‘Raised without antibiotics’ beef which was quietly buried in a USDA press release about a guidance document. Am I the only commentator to have even noticed this? I haven’t seen it mentioned in any other news outlets so far.
This week’s food safety news has a warning about undeclared peanut in mustard powder - the warning comes from the UK but the issue could spread. Don’t miss it!
Have a great week,
Karen
P.S. Did you miss our latest e-book?
Food Safety Quick Bites
Pesticides: a source of PFAS in foods?
Pesticides such as agricultural chemicals used in the production of corn, wheat, kale, spinach, apples and strawberries contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS chemicals) say the authors of a comprehensive review of the presence of PFAS chemicals in pesticide products, and these could be a source of PFAS in foods.
Intrinsic versus extrinsic hazards - reader response
In Issue 155 I explained reader Chris’ way of categorising physical hazards into intrinsic hazards and extrinsic hazards - intrinsic being shards of mussel shell in a seafood mix, for example, and extrinsic being broken glass in food.
Reader Richard Pike responded with a warning, saying to call a hazard ‘intrinsic’ is “often simply an excuse for negligence or incompetence”. Not my intent!
Richard recommends further categorising intrinsic hazards into avoidable and unavoidable hazards. Using the example of pitted olives, whole seeds are an avoidable hazard, he says, because they are easy to remove and, on an industrial scale at least, easy to monitor. This means you can set a very low or zero tolerance in a specification and the hazard can be controlled with supplier selection or monitoring. An associated unavoidable hazard, says Richard, might be sharp seed fragments caused by damage to the seed during the mechanical pitting process, which, depending on the fragment size, could be almost impossible to detect.
I totally agree, intrinsic hazards must be prevented and controlled just as all food safety hazards must be, and I didn’t mean to infer that intrinsic hazards somehow need less attention in the way of controls/prevention/supplier approvals. Thank you, Richard for your contributions.
🍏 Read the original post: Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Hazards - Reader insight (Issue 155) 🍏
Deadly Listeria factory’s former sanitation manager spills the dirt
Boar’s Head’s Jarratt (Virginia) plant, which is responsible for nine Listeria deaths amid claims of appalling sanitation on site, hired its first sanitation manager in January 2023, after decades of producing liverwurst and other deli meats without one.
The manager’s contract was terminated less than 8 months later after he tried to implement modern cleaning practices onsite, which he said caused significant “pushback” from management. He said not enough time was allowed for cleaning, debris removal before wet cleaning was “nonexistent” and pre-cleaning rinse water was not hot enough to be effective. He alleges no one was hired to replace him in the sanitation manager’s role after he left.
Worst (wurst) food pun of the week
Had to groan at this shocker in an article in the New York Post. The article describes how Boar’s Head has discontinued liverwurst production (forever) and mentions that liverwurst, an emulsified sausage made from minced pig liver, had enjoyed a revival after World War II. Here’s what they said of the revival, and the current situation for Boar’s Head.
“It was the best of times. Now it’s the wurst of times.” The New York Post.
Groan.
Emerging Trends in Food Fraud (2024)
Two weeks ago I talked about emerging trends in food safety. Now it’s time for food fraud trends.
Like my post about food safety trends, in this week’s post I discuss trends I have personally noticed in my weekly scans of hundreds of food industry news items and include hard data and concrete examples where available.
More awareness, more enforcement
The biggest trend in food fraud for 2024 is a positive one (yay!), with more enforcement agencies taking action against food fraud perpetrators, and growing awareness of the intersections between food fraud, food safety and organised crime groups.
Some countries are lagging behind (Australia, USA I’m looking at you!), but others are doing well. Standouts are the United Kingdom, with the National Food Crime Unit and Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit, as well as Italy, Spain and the European Union as a whole.
With more enforcement, there have been more incidents reported in the past year. For example, the European Commission’s Annual Report for the Alert and Cooperation Network (2023), which covers food safety and food fraud suspicions and was published last week, describes a 26% increase in food fraud-related notifications over the previous year.
Enforcement actions in Italy and Spain, especially related to olive oil and seafood traceability have been frequent inclusions in the European Commission Joint Research Council’s monthly food fraud reports.
Less concern for intentions and definitions
I’ve also noticed that fewer agencies are wasting energy trying to define food fraud exactly, or even wanting to understand whether a seller was intentionally misleading the market. As a reminder, many definitions of fraud depend on the perpetrator’s motivations; it only counts as true fraud if the perpetrator intended to mislead.
Instead, enforcement activities are focused on falsified documents and food safety violations. For example, in 2023 there were a number of violations in live animal trading in France, mostly related to forged horse passports and health certificates. Such trading is illegal, and could result in food safety violations, but the intention to commit food fraud does not need to be proven by authorities in order to pursue and punish such violations.
Similarly, the EU Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions monthly reports include hundreds of alerts that may or may not be the result of deliberate fraud. The reports label them ‘suspicions’. For example, European pesticide residue violations, in which fruit or veg imported to Europe contains pesticides that are illegal in Europe, could be due to the ignorance of the farmer or importer about EU rules - an accidental violation - or could be done knowingly by importers who hope they will not be caught - fraud - but the EU suspicions reports do not distinguish between these scenarios.
More appetite for sharing information and authenticity databases
Food companies and laboratories are increasingly willing to share information. The Food Industry Intelligence Network has continued to grow and members tell me they are reaping tangible rewards from the intelligence shared by the network. Great news.
The high cost of developing and maintaining authenticity databases for analytical testing is not only being recognised as a significant barrier to testing for most food companies, but efforts to overcome these barriers have begun to bear fruit (hooray!), with more public databases being developed and published.
The Food Authenticity Network maintains a searchable list of analytical databases for authenticity testing held by laboratories and researchers, including their status as proprietary or public.
Cinnamon still on the radar
In the USA, the fallout from the (probably) fraudulent adulteration of cinnamon in applesauce pouches continues.
Commentators are calling for a review of the US recall process in the wake of the scandal.
Suspicions about cinnamon have led to increased testing for heavy metals, leading to a number of recalls for ground cinnamon for high lead levels - although whether the lead is present due to accidental contamination or economically motivated adulteration is unclear, since the concentrations are not usually published. High concentrations are an indication of food fraud, while lower concentrations could be due to accidental contamination during growing or processing.
There have been at least seven recalls for lead in ground cinnamon since 1st July in the US.
If you haven’t yet updated your vulnerability assessment for cinnamon to include lead chromate as a potential adulterant, do that now!
Olive oil frauds likely to continue
Olive oil prices are still at record highs and the outlook is not expected to improve, as growing conditions remain difficult due to climate change. While prices remain high there remains a strong incentive to replace some or all of a package of olive oil with lower-quality olive oil or cheaper vegetable oil.
CBD foods and psychoactive foods
Cannabinoids (CBD) and THC-containing CBD foods, which were rare ten years ago, are an area of concern in Europe where they are considered novel foods or novel ingredients and not allowed.
Psychoactive foods such as ‘shroom’ candies have caused food safety problems in the US, and are considered a food fraud concern where their labelling or ingredient lists are misleading. Psychoactive foods marketed with branding that mimics popular children’s food brands are similarly considered to be problematic.
Supplements
More data is emerging about the prevalence of undeclared pharmaceutical drugs in supplements, with rates at alarming levels. For example, a study published last year described hundreds of incidences of unauthorised, undeclared pharmaceutical adulterants in food supplements and the presence of unauthorised supplements in the European Union. It’s almost certainly happening in other regions - it’s just that we don’t have the data yet.
Pharmaceuticals are added to make ‘natural’ supplements more effective but are not included on the label, and usually are not legal as supplement ingredients. For example, red yeast supplements, which are said to be good for controlling cholesterol were found to be adulterated with the undeclared drug lovastatin at a rate of 9% (n = 35) in a survey published in June.
Common pharmaceutical adulterants include sexual health drugs such as sildenafil (Viagra); stimulants, including 1,3-dimethylamine (DMAA, an athletic performance enhancer and weight loss drug) and anabolics and prohormones (body-building “steroids”).
Other trends
🌾There is a growing awareness of frauds in agricultural inputs, such as pesticides, fertilisers, seeds and animal feed. Plant protection products were a category with increased notifications in the 2023 EU Food Fraud ACN report, with illegal use and illegal trading the main fraud types. Read about two recent pesticide frauds in this week’s food fraud news.
🐟 Seafood short-weighting through the use of undeclared glazing, undeclared water addition or the use of undeclared or unauthorised additives or preservatives, is a growing concern in Europe.
🧀 Protected designations (PDO and PGI) are the basis for an increasing number of fraud claims. For example, Greece and Cyprus have been claiming that businesses in other countries are using the terms feta cheese and halloumi cheese illegally.
🍬 Cross-border issues with illegal additives and pesticides seem to be becoming more prevalent. For example, some candies imported from the US are illegal in Britain due to the presence of unauthorised food additives. If the importer or retailer sells the candies knowing they are illegal, that is food fraud. Pesticide rules similarly vary from place to place and are the basis for dozens of European import alerts each month.
🎣 Possible emerging risk: Low-grade tuna is said to be increasingly treated with a concoction of additives, which are not always illegal but often not declared. In Issue 145’s Food Fraud News (June 2024), I reported that around 60% of tuna exported from Vietnam is allegedly being treated with chemicals to give it a vibrant red colour, a practice which began around 5 years ago. The treatments are legal in the USA if labelled, but illegal in Europe.
🌴 The soon-to-be-enforced EU Deforestation Rules (EUDR) which affect coffee, cocoa, soy, beef and palm oil, have already caused disruptions in supply chains. The rules create motivations for fraud in the documentation that accompanies shipments to the EU. In addition, possible price differentials between EUDR-compliant shipments and non-compliant shipments create opportunities for bad actors to profit from fraudulent trading.
Takeaways for food professionals
In the food fraud landscape, much remains unchanged: where a profit can be made, fraudsters will continue to exploit weaknesses in food systems. However, more enforcement activities, at least in some parts of the world, seem to be making a difference, especially where they involve the dismantling of large criminal networks.
There is an increasing appetite for information sharing among food businesses and analytical service providers, which will strengthen the fight against food fraud. Food businesses of all sizes can benefit from initiatives including the Food Industry Intelligence Network and the Food Authenticity Network.
While the most fraud-affected commodities continue to be at the top of food fraud lists, there is more activity or awareness about fraud in cinnamon, olive oil, supplements, seafood and pesticides, and probable emerging risks for commodities affected by the EUDR.
In short: 🍏 Food fraud trends for 2024 include more enforcement, and a growing willingness for information sharing, particularly in the UK and EU 🍏 Seafood, olive oil and cinnamon have all been affected by fraud in the past 12 months 🍏 I’ve noticed an increase in cross-border issues from pesticides and additives that are legal in some countries but not others 🍏 The illegal selling of psychoactive foods may be becoming more prevalent 🍏 More data about undeclared pharmaceuticals in supplements is available (it’s alarming) 🍏 Disruptions to the supply chains of EUDR-affected commodities are creating new fraud opportunities🍏
Food Safety News and Resources
This week’s food safety news has an important warning for mustard powder which has already caused 50 recalls in the UK for undeclared peanut protein. As the implicated mustard originated in a major spice exporting country, I’m predicting this issue might soon be seen in other countries. Plus there’s new food defence guidance from IFS, a fantastic recipe-makers’ guide to food safety, four free webinars and more.
Click the preview below to check it out.
How Rainbow Sprinkles are Made (Just for Fun)
Sometimes you just need a colourful video with a peppy soundtrack. This 5 minute clip which shows the manufacturing process for cake decorating sprinkles is informative, fun and completely safe for work. Enjoy.
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, research and incident reports
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
In this week’s food fraud news:
📌 Chemical adulteration mortality rate 😮;
📌 New guidance, new methods;
📌 Shocking stats for US meat ‘Raised without antibiotics’;
📌 Fake pesticides, huge fake organic fruit and veg operation discovered, fake halal, illicit bear meat.
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