Issue #77 | 5 Top Food Safety Concerns for 2023 | How To Address Document Fraud In Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessments | Coffee Bean Production |

2023-02-27

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.

• Reminder, our first meet-up is next month (save the date)

• Five food safety trends to watch out for in 2023

• How To Address Document Fraud In Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessments

• News and Resources Roundup - includes ‘mad honey’ poisoning from an obscure natural toxin

• Just for Fun, learn about coffee bean production

• Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues

🎧 On the go? Listen to me read out today’s email with a free trial subscription - link at the bottom of this email 🎧

Hello, Happy Monday!

Welcome to Issue 76 of The Rotten Apple.

By the way, if you just subscribed, thank you very much 😊. Our subscriber base is growing steadily but this newsletter is still very much a labour of love. If you have been thinking about supporting me with a paying subscription, I would love you to ‘bite the bullet’ and sign up this month (it costs less than $2.50 per week and is probably tax-deductible if you work in the food industry).

My mission this week is to get 2023’s food safety issues on your professional radar so you can take action to protect consumers and your brand.

Also this week, document fraud - it’s a huge contributor to food fraud in supply chains. I explain how to address it to protect your food company from food document fraud.

Finally, I share a video taken at a coffee plantation and processing facility in Rwanda (funky music!) You’ll find a list of food fraud incidents and horizon-scanning news under the paywall. If you haven’t had a peek behind the paywall, why not take a look with our 7 day trial offer?

Thanks for being part of our food safety community,

Karen

P.S. Need more info about paid subscriptions? Click here. Or….

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Reminder! Live Events Start Next Month

Save the date for our first live event, an informal online meetup. This is a chance to say ‘hi’ and chat with fellow food professionals.

• Topic: The food safety industry in your country – Challenges?  Wins? Trends?

• Thursday March 16^th at UTC 21:00 (Friday 17^th for Australia and Asia). Click here to convert to your local time . Duration one hour.

At this point, I’m expecting 5 - 20 attendees for the March meetup.

For more information, and to sign up for pre-event reminder emails, check out our live events page:

🍏🍏🍏 Live Events 🍏🍏🍏

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How To Address Document Fraud In Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessments

Document fraud is a huge contributor to food fraud in supply chains.   Falsified laboratory reports, fake organic certificates and even fake disposal declarations are all examples of document fraud.

Does your food company need a separate document fraud program?

Find out in this month’s supplement for paying subscribers.

How to Address Document Fraud in Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessments

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Five Food Safety Trends for 2023

Last week I shared my top food fraud trends for 2023. This week, it’s food safety trends.

Here’s what I’m seeing more of lately, in the world of food safety, and these are trends that I expect to continue through 2023 and beyond.

1. Direct-to-consumer food businesses making mistakes

Direct-to-consumer food businesses sell their products exclusively online, or mostly online, and don’t supply major retailers. It’s a more profitable business model than traditional manufacturing, because the business can charge consumers higher prices than they would get by selling wholesale.

Entrepreneurs love it!

The problem with this model is that these businesses are subject to less food safety oversight than manufacturers who supply to big retailers, because they don’t get audited by their customers. And ‘boot-strapping’ entrepreneurs don’t always have the food safety knowledge that they need, or the desire to pay for experts to help.

Last year we saw Daily Harvest, a direct-to-consumers company, accused of poisoning hundreds of their customers after they used a questionable ingredient in one or more of their products (check out Issues #44, #46, 48 and #64 for our coverage).

A TikTok influencer was also accused of food safety and labelling errors last year, related to her famous pink sauce, which she sold directly to consumers using social media channels.

@chef.piiReply to @mo3reno IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT TASTES LIKE BUY IT PRE SALE BEGINS TONIGHT

Tiktok failed to load.

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With more consumers buying food online these days, we could expect to see more food safety issues in that channel.

2. Compliance problems with kombucha and other low and no-alcohol drinks

Most countries have regulations about how much alcohol can be present in ‘non-alcoholic’ drinks. Kombucha, a fermented food, contains small amounts of alcohol as a natural product of fermentation. Other low and no-alcohol versions of drinks like beer and wine can retain remnant alcohol. If the drinks contain too much, they are in breach of labelling laws and can pose a risk to vulnerable consumers.

In one example, non-alcoholic drinks in Germany were found to contain more ethanol than permitted under relevant labelling laws, with 20 percent of 25 samples affected.

Kombucha and low and no-alcohol alternatives to alcoholic drinks are becoming more popular so compliance issues are likely to increase in 2023.

3. More Listeria headaches for food manufacturers

Is Listeria a food safety risk in foods that are supposed to be fully cooked by the consumer? The answer used to be “no”, but that is changing.

Some countries are demanding recalls of frozen foods, such as raw frozen vegetables, or frozen pasta dishes, due to Listeria contamination, even though consumers are supposed to cook the food before eating it, which would eliminate the risk. The USA and Australia have both had such recalls in recent years.

Europe had a recall for Salmonella in NOT ready-to-eat food recently too.

A newer trend is recalls due to Listeria-positive environmental samples. This month, a range of sandwiches, salads and yoghurts were recalled in the USA after Listeria was found in the manufacturing facility, not in the products themselves, even though no illnesses had been reported.

4. Mycotoxins, mycotoxins, mycotoxins

Changing weather patterns and new soil regeneration practices are bringing mycotoxin risks to regions that have not had to worry about them before. For example, a recent study reported that European wheat crops are increasingly at risk, with almost half of all crops impacted by Fusarium Head Blight, a fungal disease that causes the toxins.

Every month there are dozens of food safety alerts related to mycotoxin contamination in Europe and beyond, and I expect that number to increase.

5. Increasing calls to ban nitrites

We have known for years that nitrites are no good for us, however they have traditionally been seen as the lesser of two evils when used in fermented and cured meats. The consumption of nitrites in processed meats is linked to cancer and poor health outcomes for people who eat a lot of processed meats.

Nitrites are used to prevent the growth of the deadly bacterium Clostridium botulinum in such foods, and until recently they have been considered a ‘must-have’ food safety protection, with the risks of botulism outweighing the risks from nitrite consumption.

In 2022 some prominent commentators began calling for a ban on nitrites in meat and I think the voices will get louder in 2023, with regulatory changes a possibility in the next few years.

Other food safety issues to expect this year

• Lots of people freaking out about heavy metals in chocolate (me included!), worldwide and perhaps more lawsuits in the USA.

• More discussions, confusions and policy updates for best before dates and use by dates, in the context of food waste reduction.

• More foodborne illness outbreaks caused by Vibrio species (marine foodborne pathogens); changing geographical incidences of algal-borne seafood toxins like ciguatera and different patterns for parasites like Cyclospora and cryptosporidium due to warming waters.

• The US FDA continuing to draw criticism and failing to get anything done.

• Consumers in first-world countries more willing to use traceability tools for checking the provenance of premium food products (example).

• Challenges for food retailers, consumers and manufacturers related to the banning of single-use plastics and the phasing out of virgin plastics in some markets.

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Food Safety News and Resources

No algorithm, just dedication… a carefully handcrafted selection from around the globe, expertly curated (by me! 😎) and free from filler, fluff and promotional junk.

This week: tantalising news from Codex about a new/updated CCP decision tree for HACCP and ‘mad honey’ poisoning caused by a natural nerve toxin.

Click the preview box below to access it.

News and Resources Roundup

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Just for Fun – Learn About Coffee Bean Production

This short video, without narration, shows coffee bean processing and production in Rwanda.

(Skip to 1:20 seconds to avoid the boring bits)

🤔 My thoughts: Are there heavy metals like lead and cadmium in that blue paint in the coffee washing tanks? 🤔

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What you missed in last week’s email

·        Five Food Fraud Trends to Watch Out For in 2023

·        These cherries are no longer low-hanging fruit

·        Sun v Earth - even bigger than you imagined (just for fun)

·        Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues - including forged health certificates for oysters

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Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, incident reports, and emerging issues, plus an 🎧 awesome audio version 🎧 (so you can catch up while on the go)

📌 Food Fraud News 📌

Black Market Easter Eggs

An entire trailer-load of Cadbury Crème Easter Eggs (200,000 eggs) was stolen by a man who used a stolen tractor to tow it away from an industrial unit