Issue #84 | Glow-in-the-dark Maple Syrup | VACCP in 2023 | Bear Meat is Tasty? |
2023-04-17
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.
Maple syrup: adulteration, fluorescence, hoarding and fraud detection tech
VACCP 2023, live training replay
Bears for dinner - just for fun (but it’s not really fun)
News and Resources Roundup
Food fraud incidents, updates and emerging issues
Hello,
Welcome to Issue 84 of The Rotten Apple, where I get sugar cravings 😊 writing about maple syrup. And a huge welcome to our new paying subscribers, thank you for your 💲support💲. This newsletter is no longer making an actual loss (yay), but it still pays me less per hour than I could earn cleaning toilets. Luckily I love putting it together for you each week!
This week’s main story was inspired by a press release from a leading Canadian centre for food fraud detection tech, the University of Guelph - the institution that brought us DNA barcoding. They have recently turned their attention to the vexed problem of maple syrup fraud. And are using its glow-able properties to defend its purity from food fraud perpetrators (love this!)
Last week I hosted The Rotten Apple’s first live training event, using YouTube live, the tech used by young gamers to share their online adventures with hordes of wide-eyed 13-year-olds. Turns out that [middle-aged woman + YouTube live streaming = multiple cringe moments] (who would’ve guessed!). The (lightly edited) replay is now available on our live events page.
Our just-for-fun section this week is not really very fun, it’s about an unusual game meat that is being sold in vending machines in Japan.
As always, food fraud news is at the end for paying subscribers (who are awesome!), including updates on the adulterated cough syrup scandal, emerging issues in sugar and a very unusual food cargo discovered at a European border.
Enjoy.
Karen
P.S. If you like this newsletter, please share it with your network. More readers helps us grow our community of food integrity champions.
Maple Syrup - Sweet, Glowy Goodness
Maple syrup, yum. Humans are biologically programmed to love sweet foods, which are of course, high in energy. Sweet foods cause our brains to release dopamine, an addiction-linked neurotransmitter, so it is no surprise that sweet-flavoured foods are highly prized and enjoyable to eat.
Maple syrup is made from the sap of maple trees which contains about 1% to 4% sucrose when harvested. After it has been concentrated into Maple syrup the resulting product is approximately 60% sucrose (source). So quite sweet, then!
Sweet, syrupy foods like maple syrup and honey are easy targets for food fraud perpetrators. This is partly due to their status as premium natural foods and partly because they can be made more profitable if water and sugars are added. Their liquid form makes it easy to blend adulterants into the products; the adulterants themselves are cheap and easily available, and such adulteration is difficult for consumers to detect. It’s no surprise then, that honey and maple syrup are consistently reported to be in the top ten most fraud-affected foods (source).
In 2016 we reported on large-scale maple syrup theft in our Trello food fraud database:
Twenty thousand litres of maple syrup has been stolen from a storage depot in Canada, which is the worlds largest producer of maple syrup. 12/08/2016 The stolen maple syrup could be sold through fraudulent channels and with compromised traceability. Purchasers of maple syrup should be vigilant for unauthorised sources of syrup. (source)
The criminals behind the theft of $18.7m worth of maple syrup in Quebec in 2011 and 2012 have been convicted. The syrup was siphoned out of containers in a warehouse over a period of months and was then sold on the black market. 12/11/2016 (source)
Canada stores maple syrup in huge quantities to protect the market from price shocks in years when production is higher or lower than usual. Check out the video below for a sneak peek inside a Canadian maple syrup storage facility (my gosh it’s so clean!)
How to know if your maple syrup is genuine?
There is no easy way for consumers to know whether the maple syrup they have purchased is genuine or not. However, food businesses can engage the services of analytical laboratories to check for adulteration. There are a number of different tests that can be done, including both targeted tests – where you search for a specific, known adulterant, and non-targeted tests.
One of the major challenges with food authenticity testing is the time that it takes to get a result from the laboratory. The time delay between obtaining a sample and getting a result limits the options a food business has if they suspect that a particular food might be affected by fraud.
It’s no wonder then, that rapid test methods are hailed with great excitement when they are developed.
A rapid test that uses the ‘glow’
A rapid test for maple syrup could be a game changer for the industry and its customers. Researchers from the University of Guelph think they might have found a method that is both fast and cost-effective. The method makes use of the fact that maple syrup glows when exposed to UV and visible light. The light emitted by specific compounds in genuine maple syrup can be captured and combined into a fluorescence ‘fingerprint’. Mathematical modelling turns the intensity and wavelength of peaks in the emitted light into a 3D map which reflects the composition of each sample.
The 3D map, or ‘fingerprint’ of a test sample can be compared to the maps of samples known to be genuine. Test samples that are statistically different to a dataset of genuine samples are flagged as inauthentic. The University of Guelph researchers were able to detect the presence of added adulterants in deliberately adulterated samples with success rates of 70 to 100 per cent.
The technology is still being developed. As with all fingerprinting methods, the success of the technology lies in having a robust database of genuine samples. The fingerprint of every genuine syrup sample is slightly different, depending on the environmental conditions during the growing season, the geographical origin of the syrups and perhaps even between different trees. This means that a wide variety of samples is needed to create statistical models that will provide accurate results for maple syrups from a wide variety of locations and across different growing seasons.
Robust databases for fingerprint methods are critical
It’s heartening to learn that the people working on this method acknowledge the need to create a bigger data set. We wouldn't want them to face the same accusations as have been levelled at a famous fingerprint method used for honey authentication.
The NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) authenticity test for honey has been criticised by Australian experts because it relies on a database of genuine honeys which might not include Australian samples. It is a proprietary database owned by a private company and there is no public information about how many Australian honey samples were included in the statistical modelling, if any.
A result of this possible database deficiency is that genuine Australian honey could produce a ‘fingerprint’ that is so different from the honeys used to create the database that it could be flagged by the statistical model as not typical of authentic honey – a result that is usually interpreted as evidence of fraudulent adulteration or dilution.
Questions about the NMR honey dataset have been raised separately in both Australia and the United Kingdom after the NMR method found unexpectedly high levels of ‘fraud’ in honey in both those countries.
🍏 This article was inspired by the University of Guelph’s Press Release about their work on maple syrup fraud detection and a write-up of their work in The Conversation. (Definitely check out The Conversation’s piece for a picture of the glowing syrup, which I can’t share here for copyright reasons) 🍏
What’s new in VACCP in 2023?
Watch our live training replay by clicking the preview below (for paying subscribers).
Food Safety News and Resources
No ads, no sponsored content: our weekly roundup of global food safety news is carefully curated and only top-quality information makes the cut.
This week includes: Masterchef fails, free GMP non-conformance training, and a new Codex manual.
Click the preview box below to access it.
Not Really Fun - Bears for Dinner
You can now buy Asiatic black bear meat from vending machines in Japan. The bears are hunted from local mountains, and the meat is sold in packs for around US$17 per 250 g. Bear meat is a delicacy in Japan, prized for its clean flavour and tender texture when cold.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-65160098.amp
What you missed in last week’s email
· No robots allowed: why AI-powered writing doesn’t belong in food safety publications
· News and Resources Roundup (food safety news that doesn’t suck)
· Two long reads for your holiday pleasure
· Food fraud news, incidents and updates
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, incident reports, and emerging issues, plus 🎧 an audio version 🎧 so you can catch up while on the go
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
Adulterated cough syrup update: two pharmaceutical manufacturers in India were investigated in relation to adulterated cough syrups
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Rotten Apple to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.