Issue #38 2022-05-16
Issue #38 2022-05-16
Good food fraud news (for once!), scope-creep in GFSI standards, food fraud sentencing and foraging as a career
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.
Good food fraud news (for once!)
Food defence and food fraud sentencing - what the courts decide
Scope creep in GFSI food standards - what does the future hold for certified businesses? (Plus give feedback to GFSI on their benchmarks)
Foraging as a career
Food fraud incidents and horizon scanning updates from the past week
🎧 On the go? Listen to me read out today’s email. Get access to audio with a free trial subscription, at the bottom of this email 🎧
A warm welcome to new subscribers and as always a big thank you to longtime readers.
I have plenty of good news for you this week, with a food fraud Canada update and sentencing for a repeat fraud offender.
The big story this week asks what the future holds for GFSI standards, as a major standards owner adds sustainability requirements for certified food businesses. Plus, a chance to tell GFSI what you think about their 2020 benchmark requirements.
Then, just for fun, we take a brief look at foraging as a career.
As always, this issue ends with food fraud incidents and horizon scanning news for paid subscribers.
Thanks for being here,
Karen
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Food Fraud
Good food fraud news 😊, for a change (except for certain oils 😔 )
If you’re the idealistic type you’re going to hate this: government food surveys that show only 10% food fraud are good news.
How is a 10% rate for food fraud good news?
(1) A survey means the authorities are paying attention.
(2) Surveys usually focus on food categories that are highly vulnerable to food fraud such as honey, fish, olive oil, and spices. These are categories that consistently have fraud at rates much higher than 10%.
(3) Survey results make great news for the mainstream media, and this raises awareness among consumers. More aware consumers equals more incentive for food fraud prevention and enforcement.
The Canadian government has just released the results of a survey they conducted in 2020 and 2021. They concentrated on the most fraud-vulnerable categories, honey, olive oil, other expensive oils, fish and spices. They sourced samples in two ways: randomly from retail outlets and in a ‘directed’ manner, in which they targeted businesses that had a history of non-compliance, or were considered high risk. Most food categories were surveyed using targeted sampling. For honey, sampling included random sampling from retail outlets.
Good results, here, Canada (mostly)!
Fish species substitution fraud came in at less than 10%. The sampling focussed on high-risk establishments and species, including cod, kingfish, snapper and tuna.
Spices (dilution with other ingredients) also had less than 10%. Again, the sampling was targeted and the spices chosen were those most vulnerable, including cumin, black pepper, cinnamon and turmeric. Of the 118 spice samples tested, just 1 sample seemed to be genuinely fraudulent: cinnamon that contained undeclared colourant. Eight of the twenty-five cumin samples contained low levels of another ingredient, but this was attributed to accidental cross-contamination rather than fraud.
Honey and olive oil results were just above 10% for fraud, at 11% and 12% respectively. Again, these results are quite ‘good’ by usual food fraud standards, remembering that the olive oil sampling was exclusively done at high-risk establishments, rather than unbiased market surveillance.
The worst performing food category was expensive oils excluding olive oil, with a 34% non-compliance rate for the 65 samples. The samples were sourced from importers, blenders, bottlers and bulk oil distributors. They were tested using gas-liquid chromatography to check their authenticity. Samples of sesame seed, grapeseed, coconut, almond, avocado, flaxseed, hazelnut and mustard seed oil were tested.
All of the oil types had at least 20% inauthentic samples, which is not good, although the sample sizes were small. The exception was the single sample of mustard seed oil, which was okay. Most worrying was coconut oil, with a significant proportion of the 13 samples, 61%, being inauthentic.
In short: 🍏 Food fraud rates of less than 10% were found in fish and spice samples from a Canadian government survey 🍏 Fraud rates for honey and olive oil were 11% and 12% 🍏 Expensive edible oils other than olive oil had high rates of authenticity problems in the survey, with coconut oil badly affected 🍏
Food Fraud and Food Defence
Food defence and food fraud sentencing - what the courts decided
Do you remember the intentional adulteration incident last year where a British guy injected food with syringes full of his own blood (see Issue #5)? He has just been found not guilty by reason of insanity. Yes, confirming all reasonable assumptions about this incident, the perpetrator really was insane.
Also last year, I reported on the story of the food fraud criminal who rammed FBI vehicles to escape arrest before going on the run.
He had set up a fictitious catering company and bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of seafood, prime beef and game meat, using stolen identities to obtain credit to pay for the goods. He then sold the ill-gotten food products to legitimate food businesses.
In a nasty twist, some of his customers were the very same food companies that he had impersonated to fraudulently obtain the goods.
He pleaded guilty in December and has just been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. He also has to pay restitution fees of more than $800,000. He was described by the court as “an unrepentant and compulsive fraudster” who has been convicted at least 34 times previously.
Read more:
Food Safety Systems
Scope creep in GFSI food standards - what does the future hold for certified businesses?
Do sustainability policies have a place in food safety standards? The certification scheme owner IFS certainly thinks so. The next version of their Food Standard is proposed to include a sustainability requirement.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. While sustainable food manufacturing is super-important for the future of our species, I just don’t know if adding requirements to certification standards is the way to achieve it. It feels like the standards writer is venturing beyond the current boundaries of food safety and quality. It feels like scope-creep.
Food safety standards have been getting longer and more difficult and more prescriptive year on year. Adding an element that does not directly impact an individual company’s food safety or food quality outcomes just seems… unhelpful.
Background
The IFS Food Standard is a major international GFSI food safety management system standard - or to be more accurate, it is a standard that has been confirmed to meet the benchmarking requirements of the GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative). It was initially developed by French and German retailer groups and is more commonly used in Europe than in other parts of the world.
Status
IFS has released a draft of version 8 of their Food Standard for public comment (comments close on 24th May, so get your skates on if you want to participate! – a link is below)
Sustainability
The requirement for sustainability in the IFS draft is a simple one. The food company’s corporate policy must address sustainability (1.1.1). There is no detail on how it should be addressed, or what needs to be in the policy.
What does this mean for food companies?
IFS is an organisation that represents retailers’ interests. If they want to add sustainability to their standard they can. The GFSI benchmarking process specifies what has to be included in a standard, but doesn’t say what can’t be included. Standards writers can -and do- add other requirements beyond those set by GFSI.
It’s possible that the GFSI will follow IFS’s lead and decide to add sustainability to their benchmarks in future. If they do, then all certified food companies will have to incorporate sustainability policies and principles into their corporate frameworks. Ultimately, that would mean longer and more arduous audits.
The justification would be that without a sustainable food system, food safety is harder to achieve at a global level. True! Sustainability-supporting activities are absolutely necessary, but I think most food safety specialists would assert that they don’t belong in a food safety audit.
Review the new draft standard and provide feedback to IFS here: https://www.ifs-certification.com/index.php/en/news/news-archiv/4270-ifs-food-version-8-public-consultation
Heads up, GFSI-interested people!
This is your chance to provide feedback on the GFSI’s (Global Food Safety Initiative’s) 2020 Benchmarking Requirements. The GFSI is running a survey, which they will use to measure how the benchmarking requirements contribute to global food safety. Respond by 1st June 2022 to have your say:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RGGJNGN
Just for Fun
Foraging as a Career
Are you ready to pack it all in, quit your job and spend the rest of your days outdoors?
I would love to do this!
Foraging is searching for and collecting wild and uncultivated plants, fungi and marine molluscs to eat. You can forage in the wilderness or in urban environments.
In my home town of Sydney, there are streets planted with rows of Lemon Myrtle trees that can be foraged for making fragrant tea and citrusy syrups. Lemon Myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) is an Australian native evergreen whose leaves have a tangy, intensely citrus fragrance and flavour.
My favourite foraging is stopping by the side of a country road to pick apples from trees that have sprouted along fencelines from apple cores thrown out travellers’ car windows. The apples are always crisp and delicious. In season it’s not uncommon to see people at these roadside trees, filling their utes (pickup trucks) with buckets of apples to take to market.
Foraging is a legitimate career. This online market is exclusively set up for buyers and sellers of fresh foraged foods (US-centric): https://foraged.market/
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