Issue #64 | Whatever Happened in the Tara Flour Poisoning Investigation | Does Theft Count as Food Fraud? | Bounty Bar Crime |
2022-11-14
Does food theft count as food fraud?
Update: Tara Flour Investigation
News and Resources Roundup (including an allergen warning)
Food Crime Alert for Mars Bounty Bars
Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues
🎧 On the go? Paying subscribers can listen to me read out today’s email - Aussie accent and all😎 - by clicking the link at the bottom of this email 🎧
Hey there!
Welcome to Issue 64 of The Rotten Apple and a big hello if you are new. It’s great to have you here. A special hey there and g’day to Leah from Australia, our latest “Good Apple” for her generous funding of more student subscriptions, thank you, Leah.
As promised last week, this issue has a recap of the mystery food-borne illness outbreak caused by an unusual ingredient, tara flour, because the US FDA updated the status of their investigation. Spoiler alert: not impressed 😒.
Also this week, should your food business pay attention to food fraud alerts about theft and smuggling? It’s a tricky question and I do my best to answer it in the context of risk as well as academic definitions for food fraud.
Our food safety news this week contains an alert about peanut allergens in emulsifier, a free webinar about halal manufacturing and plenty of other resources and updates.
Finally, is it a crime to combine coconut and chocolate? Twenty-eight per cent of people think it is. I don’t agree. But I do reckon it’s a crime to remove Bounty bars from mixed packs of Mars chocolate treats. Just me?!
Have a great week,
Karen
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Does Theft of Food Count as Food Fraud?
In Issue #62, we learnt about a new concept in food fraud, known as ‘food laundering’, from a 🍏 scientific paper 🍏 by respected food fraud researchers in the Netherlands.
This week, let’s discuss another concept from the same paper, which is related to food theft. The authors, Gussow and Mariët, take an unambiguous (and perhaps unconventional) stance about whether the theft of bulk quantities of food counts as food fraud.
It's a tricky one. Stolen food that makes its way back into legitimate supply chains results in customers and consumers being deceived or misled…. The customer or consumer believes the food is from an authorised/legal/legitimate source, when in fact it is not. This concept of deception is at the heart of most definitions of food fraud, including my go-to definition:
“Food fraud is deception, using food for economic gain” (Spink, et al 2016)
So for most food fraud experts, the act of stealing food and selling it back into legitimate food supply chains is most definitely a form of ‘food fraud’. However, Gussow and Mariët disagree.
They argue that food fraud only occurs when the fraud impacts the food. As an example, they say, when criminals use food shipments to conceal drug smuggling, the food itself is not impacted. Therefore, such smuggling is NOT food fraud. It is instead, assert the authors, an example of ‘food-adjacent crime’. Food theft is also a food-adjacent crime according to this definition, so long as the food and its labels are not changed or affected during the course of the theft.
In their new food fraud definition, the food has to be either:
illegal to begin with, such as an animal by-product not fit for human consumption, or
have had its value enhanced in some fraudulent way, such as by having an illegal colourant added to boost its apparent freshness.
“Food fraud is committed by any actor who is intentionally involved in illegal acts for economic advantage, thus causing or facilitating illegal food to be laundered into the supply chain or for food to be fraudulently value-enhanced.” (Gussow and Mariët 2022)
When food is stolen, it is neither illegal food, nor is its value enhanced by the perpetrators. Hence, stolen food does not fit within this new definition of food fraud. Likewise, tax avoidance, such as smuggling food across borders to avoid import duties, is not food fraud under this definition.
Why does it matter? Because food frauds and food-adjacent crimes like smuggling, tax avoidance and theft require different types of controls and enforcement activities for regulatory authorities. Additionally, such crimes usually fall under completely different enforcement jurisdictions compared to crimes where the food itself has been affected.
What does this mean for food businesses?
Should food businesses change their vulnerability assessments and mitigation plans because of this new definition?
Regulatory authorities, enforcement activities, lawyers and criminal investigations will benefit from this new demarcation of ‘food fraud’ versus ‘food-adjacent crimes’, but food businesses are not directly affected.
Food businesses should not need to do anything different in their food fraud protection activities in light of this new definition. Here’s why. If a food business inadvertently purchases food that has been stolen, diverted or smuggled, it can suffer consequences that range from mild to severe, even if the purchase does not count technically count as ‘food fraud’.
If the stolen or smuggled food has not been tampered with or mishandled, then there won’t be any food safety consequences, but there could still be financial and compliance consequences. If tampering or mishandling has occurred, there could be major food safety consequences, AND there is no way for a food business to know about tampering and mishandling because traceability and chain-of-custody documents will either be missing or false.
Vulnerability assessments and food fraud mitigation activities still need to include a consideration of the risks posed by stolen food and smuggled food. It’s a good idea to include a one-sentence description of the scope of your vulnerability assessment in your food fraud prevention program.
What does this mean for The Rotten Apple and our Food Fraud Trello Board?
The theft of bulk quantities of food and the smuggling of food still fit within our definition of food fraud (“Food fraud is deception, using food for economic gain” (Spink, et al 2016)). However, we have only ever reported on smuggling-type incidents if they are unusual, unexpected or could be evidence of a new trend or an emerging new risk for food businesses.
We will continue to monitor for and report on food crimes that include theft and smuggling because the stolen and smuggled food continues to present possible risks to food businesses, noting that only unusual, unexpected or new smuggling issues are included in our incident reports.
Sources
🍏 Gussow, K.E., Mariët, A. The scope of food fraud revisited. Crime Law Soc Change (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-022-10055-w 🍏
John Spink, Douglas C. Moyer, Cheri Speier-Pero, Introducing the Food Fraud Initial Screening model (FFIS), Food Control Volume 69, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2016.03.016
In case you missed it…
Earlier this month we introduced a searchable list of recent food fraud incidents for paying subscribers.
Daily Harvest (Tara Flour?) Mystery Outbreak Update
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has added an update to its outbreak information page for the Daily Harvest illnesses and recall.
In case you missed it, a bunch of people became seriously ill with liver functioning issues that required hospitalisations and surgery, after eating lentil-based meal-topper ‘crumbles’ marketed by a company called Daily Harvest.
The brand owner was accused of responding too slowly and initially blaming consumers for not following on-pack cooking directions. There were no common pathogens, pesticides, or mycotoxins in the products, so the cause of the illnesses was a mystery.
After ‘extensive’ testing by the brand owner, independent laboratories and the FDA, Daily Harvest released a statement saying they think the illnesses were caused by a toxin in an ingredient called tara flour. But they couldn’t say exactly what component of the tara flour was toxic.
This is bad. As a food safety specialist, it’s hard to do your job of protecting consumers from hazards if you don’t know what those hazards are.
What does the update say? Not much. Nothing has really changed 😞, except the FDA has now handed the case from their outbreak team to a different, unspecified group. They still won’t say for sure what caused consumers to become so seriously ill. They say they will continue to “evaluate which components of this product may have caused these illnesses” and their investigation is “ongoing”. It’s been months now… 😞
🍏 For more on this story see Issue #44, Issue #46 and Issue #48
Other commentators: “Tara Flour is Safe” and “Tara Flour is an Illegal Adulterant”
I am not the only one following this story. Here’s what two other commentators had to say about tara flour. They have two very divergent perspectives.
Marion Nestle, the esteemed nutrition writer, says that the ingredient is safe (here’s her post) and suggests that the flour was either contaminated or that only people with unusual sensitivities were affected. I greatly admire Ms Nestle’s work but think she made a grave error in her post. She bases her conclusion about the safety of tara flour on a toxicity review of a completely different food ingredient, having misunderstood the difference between tara-derived thickeners and the tara ‘flour’ ingredient used in the recalled products.
Neal Fortin, a Director of the Institute for Food Laws & Regulations at Michigan State University, wrote at length about the regulatory status of tara flour as an ingredient under USA regulations. He concluded that it is an illegal food additive and therefore counts as an ‘adulterant’. Read his perspective here.
News and Resources
This week: another allergen alert for emulsifiers, a practical guide to crisis planning and more. Click the preview box below to access it.
Food Crime Alert
Not. (Just for fun!)
Bounty Bars will be temporarily removed from mixed boxes of mini-bars of confectionary in the UK after 39 per cent of survey respondents said they want the bars gone. Okay, so it’s not really a crime. Unless you LERVE Bounty Bars like I do….. like a trip to the beach with a side serving of condensed milk.
What you missed in last week’s email
· Microplastic Contamination, Now With Toxic Gasses
· Consumers Versus Food Businesses, The Muddy Waters of Eco-Claims
· Updates and deja vu: Cronobacter in Infant Formula and Salad Greens Contamination Again
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, incident reports, and emerging issues, plus an 🎧 audio version of this email 🎧 so you can catch up while on the go
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
Scottish Food Agency Warns About Food Crime
Sales of counterfeit alcohol, especially vodka, fraud in the meat sector, including
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