180 | Irish Special: Fraud in Potatoes |
Plus, the surprising link between gold prices and cocoa supply chains
This is The Rotten Apple, an inside view on food fraud and food safety for professionals, policy-makers and purveyors. Subscribe for insights, latest news and emerging trends straight to your inbox each Monday.
Food fraud in potatoes;
Training: Animal feed safety;
The surprising link between illegal gold mining and chocolate;
Food Safety News and Resources;
An Irishman reviews St Patrick’s Day food (just for fun);
Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents.
Happy St Patrick’s Day,
Like many Australians I’m proud to have a generous slug of Irish ancestry - although my Irish great-great-grandfather was excommunicated from the Australian catholic church after an incident with his local priest and a horse whip in the 1890s.
So to my Irish brethren around the world Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh.
This week, we’re talking potatoes - more specifically food fraud in potatoes - and the surprising link between cocoa supply chains and illegal gold mining. As always there’s food safety news for everyone and food fraud news for paying subscribers, who can also access a recording of the animal feed safety training session from last week.
Thank you to everyone who renewed their paid subscriptions in the past week, your continued support means the world to me (and helps pay for tonight’s can of Guinness)
Cheers!
Karen
Correction (Issue 178)
The article Update about future food policy in Europe in Issue 178 contained a broken link for the European Commission’s vision for agriculture and food. Here is the correct link: https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/vision-agriculture-food_en
Thank you to reader Vilma for letting me know.
Food Fraud in Potatoes
When we think about food fraud, we often think about foods like olive oil and honey or expensive beverages like champagne and whisky. Potatoes? Not so much.
Food fraud comes in many forms, with the most concerning being crimes in which food or drink is adulterated or faked entirely by people who are more concerned about profits than safety.
Adulteration-type food fraud shows up like toxic melamine powder added to baby formula and lead chromate added to cinnamon, which caused up to 300,000 illnesses in China in 2008 and a multi-million-unit recall in the USA in 2023 respectively.
Adulteration is not usually a fraud seen in fresh whole vegetables like potatoes - after all, you can’t easily boost the economic value of a potato by adding a nitrogen-boosting compound or toxic colourant.
It’s not unheard of though. Last year, criminals in India were discovered colouring 2,100 kg of white potatoes with illegal and undeclared red dye in a warehouse. The red potatoes were sold at a significantly higher price than white potatoes.
Adulteration is the type of food fraud we worry most about, because of its impacts on food safety. But there are, of course, other ways for criminals to profit by misleading their customers and consumers.
When it comes to whole vegetables, the frauds we most often hear about are smuggling, theft and misrepresentation.
Fraud suspicions, as listed by the European Commission’s Alert and Cooperation Network (ACN) in their monthly agri-food fraud suspicions reports, include many related to vegetables and fruit. In fact, fruit and veg is the category with the highest number of fraud suspicions in the monthly ACN reports.
The fraud suspicions for vegetables and fruit are usually related to the presence of pesticide residues. They are called ‘suspicions’ because it’s impossible to know whether the pesticide residues are present due to intentional law-breaking or because farmers and/or traders are unaware of the presence of the pesticides or their regulatory status.
Although there are possible frauds related to pesticide use in potato supply chains, I suspect that a more common type of fraud for potatoes is misrepresentation. Claims about the organic status, the geographical origin and the quality grade are called credence claims by food fraud experts because consumers have no way to verify their validity.
We don’t have many records of credence claim fraud for vegetables because food fraud incidents are more likely to be investigated and reported in official systems when they have the potential to impact human safety.
However, in 2022 the United Kingdom’s National Food Crime Unit investigated a company that was alleged to be selling low-grade potatoes in place of premium-grade potatoes.
Similarly, in 2023, Italian authorities seized 33,000 kg of potatoes that had been imported but were fraudulently marketed as Italian-grown.
Among my list of food fraud incidents, the others related to potatoes are for theft from farms in Spain, consignments without proper documentation - and so probably stolen - in Italy and alleged anti-competitive trading of frozen potato products in the USA.
The takeaway: even the lowly spud is not immune from food fraud.
🍏 Access the European Commission’s monthly REPORT ON EU AGRI-FOOD FRAUD SUSPICIONS here: FFN Monthly | EN 🍏
Training: Animal Feed Safety
Our latest live training session, presented by feed safety expert Bronwyn von Hellens, was super-interesting for those of us who are more familiar with human food safety.
Professionals familiar with animal feed safety enjoyed hearing the latest updates and learning hot tips from the front lines of feed manufacturing and auditing.
Access the recording here: Animal Feed Safety | The Rotten Apple (for paying subscribers)
The surprising link between illegal gold mining and chocolate
Gold prices have been rising since 2024, growing by 40% since January 2024. Last week it reached an all-time high of US$3,000 per ounce, with more rises expected through the remainder of 2025. Geopolitical tensions and global insecurity are contributing to the price rises.
Cocoa prices have also been rising sharply and shattering records.
Today I learned that the two commodities are linked through an unexpected quirk of geography and geology.
Ghana, the West African country that is the second largest cocoa producer in the world, also has large reserves of gold. Mining for that gold by private citizens and unauthorised groups has impacted fertile land once used for cocoa growing.
In 2024, Ghana’s cocoa output was just over half of its usual annual output.
I’ve been reporting on declining production and increasing prices for cocoa regularly in my food fraud horizon scanning news. Reduced availability and higher prices can increase the likelihood of food fraud by creating more compelling reasons for people to commit fraud, such as the need to fulfil supply contracts, and by increasing the amount of profit to be gained from fraudulent trading, theft and smuggling.
Reports of cocoa bean smuggling between Ghana and neighbouring countries have become common in the past 12 months.
Declining production volumes in West Africa are usually attributed to disruptive weather patterns and the cocoa tree disease swollen shoot disease. But illegal gold mines in Ghana are also having an impact.
With recent large increases in the price of gold and more problems with cocoa production due to disease and climate change, there is increasing recognition that more cocoa farmland will be lost to mining this year.
In 2022, a survey by the Ghanaian cocoa board revealed that 19,000 hectares of cocoa plantations had been lost, taken over or damaged by illegal gold mining.
The Swiss media outlet, Swissinfo, reported that cocoa farmers were selling their land to illegal gold miners, with swathes of farmland transformed into wastelands dotted with piles of clay contaminated with mercury, a by-product of gold extraction.
You can hardly blame the farmers for selling up. Their land was reportedly selling for up to fifty times the value of a year’s cocoa crop, on a per acre basis.
Swissinfo also reported that the excavators moving earth and uprooting vegetation in the Ghanian cocoa-growing region of Kunsu bore the logos of a Chinese brand and that Chinese nationals were working with local men to operate mines and purchase farmland from cocoa growers.
It’s not just the loss of farmland affecting cocoa production, but the damaging effects of mining operations on neighbouring cocoa plantations. Gold extraction uses cyanide and mercury, and creates by-products containing lead, cadmium and arsenic, which pollute rivers and other water sources.
Clear felling of trees for mining destroys the microclimates needed for nearby cocoa trees to survive hot and dry conditions and fight off diseases. This leaves any remaining cocoa farms in the area less productive and less profitable, further incentivising a switch to mining for the land owners - a vicious cycle.
In short: Illegal gold mines in Ghana are hurting cocoa production, with record-high gold prices incentivising mining in cocoa growing areas 🍏 Cocoa bean production volumes have decreased in West Africa due to cocoa tree diseases and unfavourable changes to the climate 🍏
Main sources
Spencer-Jolliffe (2024). Cocoa crisis: Ghana’s output almost halves. [online] Confectionery News. Available at: https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2024/07/23/Cocoa-crisis-Ghana-s-output-almost-halves/.
FoodNavigator.com. (2025). Cocoa crisis: Illegal gold mining damaging yields and prices. [online] Available at: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025/03/10/cocoa-prices-driven-up-by-gold-mining/ [Accessed 17 Mar. 2025].
Siaw, A., Ofosu, G. and Sarpong, D. (2023). Cocoa production, farmlands, and the galamsey: Examining current and emerging trends in the ASM-agriculture nexus. Journal of Rural Studies, 101, pp.103044–103044. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.103044.
SWI swissinfo.ch. (n.d.). How gold mining in Ghana is threatening Swiss chocolate. [online] Available at: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/how-gold-mining-in-ghana-is-threatening-swiss-chocolate/47870756.
Food Safety News and Resources
In this week’s food safety news: sugar lumps cause a recall of breakfast cereal, new data for microplastics in fish and a survey reveals links between heavy metals and table salt, plus news of a large Salmonella outbreak in Europe and two free webinars.
Click the preview below to read.
An Irishman reviews St Patrick’s Day food in the USA
“It’d be better with some Irish whisky” 😂
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, horizon scanning and incident reports
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
In this week’s food fraud news:
📌 Emerging risks in coffee, meat, prawns, feed grain;
📌 Method for authentication of parmesan cheese;
📌 Fraud in besan;
📌 Undeclared vegetable oil blending, and more.