The UK Food Standards Authority (FSA) has established a Food Fraud Task Force; a European-wide fraud investigation is looking into Chinese chicken; and a new international standard, ISO 22000, will help trace food movements.
Besides the element of financial fraud, there are quality, health and safety issues. It is unlikely that an organisation that sells products cheaply is maintaining the highest standards of health and safety, putting consumers at risk. Triggering allergic reactions is one consideration while ingredients being added fraudulently might be contrary to some religious beliefs. Illegally declared foods also circumvent the EU’s tariffs and trading restrictions.
Poultry meat from China, for example, is banned in the UK because of concerns that regulations governing the levels of medicine residues in the animals are being breached. This also applies to bee husbandry, where honey may contain antibiotics. Although it may be legal to use such drugs in the home country, they are toxic and could aid a build up of resistance to commonly used human drugs.
Protection for the public is needed in cases such as Euro Freeze which, allegedly, illegally declared foods by placing illicit health labels on meat products. It appears that chicken originating from China, for importation into Northern Ireland via Greece, was seized at Belfast port and subsequently destroyed by Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) officials on animal health grounds. DARD informed the FSA, which suspended the coldstore’s operating licence and launched a hunt for beef, poultry and pork amongst customers.
There are numerous possibilities for fraudulently devaluing food: vegetarian products can contain substances derived from animal fats; venison is sometimes bulked up with beef; cheap salami has been known to contain horsemeat; and low-cost chicken-burger might be adulterated with even cheaper meat; and the best curry rice may well be contaminated by the addition of much inferior grains.
Tests increasingly use gene-based, chemical and biological techniques to determine food authenticity. They enable the proportion of haddock in a fish finger to be measured, for example; and can detect cheaper rice mixed in with premium-priced basmati.
The detectives
One organisation that checks on food on an international scale is the UK government’s Central Science Laboratory (CSL) near York. It also works for commercial organisations wanting to make sure they and their customers are getting what they pay for. A coffee company, for example, commissioned CSL to check on the powders being put into vending machines carrying its name. Once coffee beans have been powdered, it is no longer possible to read their DNA. But the scientists used another technique borrowed from medicine – Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
Currently, CSL is being funded from an EU campaign against food fraud, called TRACE. This initiative aims to improve the health and well-being of European citizens by delivering improved traceability of food products. The five-year project will provide consumers with added confidence in the authenticity of European food through complete traceability along the whole farm to fork food chain.
The EU has also strengthened its laws on traceability. The new mandatory traceability requirement applies to all food, animal feed, food-producing animals and all types of food chain operators from the farming sector to processing, transport, storage, distribution and retail to the consumer.
To tackle the problem of adulterated foods, FSA has established a food fraud task force to tackle traders in illegal food and to protect consumers. The group will be chaired by Dr Philip Barlow, former associate professor of Food Science and Technology at the National University of Singapore. It is intended that the task force will initially focus on the meat sector and then expand to the rest of the food industry.
Dr Barlow says: “Food safety is of paramount importance and everyone expects that the food they obtain is of the highest quality, which in most cases it is. But there are always a few individuals who will, for personal gain, try and pass off suspect food as meeting the required standards. The findings and recommendations of the task force will hopefully give everyone an even greater confidence in the food they consume.”
“Setting up this new task force signals the agency’s commitment and determination that everything that can be done to stamp out food fraud will be taken forward,” said director of enforcement at the FSA, David Statham. “It is clear that some current processes could and should be tightened and this review has been instigated to deliver solutions.”
Encouraging whistleblowing
The task force will produce a series of interim reports for the FSA board and any necessary actions identified will be fast-tracked prior to the final report, due in October 2007. Topics could include new measures for health markings, the effectiveness of the agency support mechanisms against fraud, the adequacy of the existing legal framework and penalties and arrangements for encouraging whistleblowing.
In a bid to crack down on growing levels of counterfeit products, the EU has announced new rules for European importers and exporters beginning on 1st January 2007. These would entail importers and exporters operating within the EU to have a security certificate that would make selling illegally-produced goods much more difficult.
But this adds to the already high number of regulations covering the food industry. The overall situation has led to a reaction from companies and trade organisations and the development of ISO22000, which is an umbrella standard that covers food safety management systems.
It shows that an organisation in the food chain can effectively control its food safety hazards so that food is safe at the time of human consumption. It is applicable to all organisations, regardless of size, which are involved in any aspect of the food chain and want to implement systems that consistently deliver safe products.
Ken Driver, director of consultancy Food Technologists, says: “It is early days to assess the take up of ISO22000 but I expect it to become very popular in large global companies in time. We have already had enquiries from Japan, Korea and the Middle East regarding our training and consultancy services.”
The company provides a full range of consulting services for food manufacturers, wholesalers or other non-manufacturing companies on most continents. It has set up an ISO 22000 training course to run in the UK and four courses have been pencilled in for next year.
Driver says the standard could help in preventing food fraud because its traceability component could act as a deterrent. It could also help boost company sales by providing evidence that the supplier follows good practice and so is unlikely to become involved in counterfeiting, mislabelling or any other suspect activities.
The ISO Central Secretariat says at least 29 countries around the world started to deploy ISO22000 very shortly after its launch in 2005.
Around the world
In Australia, Ben Bowering, quality, health, safety and environmental manager for Vinpac International, wine bottler and packer, said: “This standard has the potential to turn the onerous task of meeting multiple, often duplicated or even contradictory requirements from various different safety and quality guidelines into one meaningful system. It will benefit everyone in the food chain.”
In Belgium, Gilles Gernaey, scientific director of dietary supplements manufacturer Hedelab said: “Thanks to the international consensus which led to the development of ISO22000, certification to this standard is destined to become the international benchmark for food quality.”
French firm Roquette claims to be the first European starch manufacturer to achieve ISO22000 certification. It is one of Europe’s largest starch and starch-derivatives business and says there is now virtually no area of the food and drink industry which does not use starch or its derivatives.
The international aspect of the standard attracted Javier Cañada Millán, quality and R&D director of Spanish food manufacturer Angulas Aguinaga. He says: “Deployment of this standard required us to strengthen our existing HACCP team, enabled us to develop a better structure and has led to a better definition of our corporate quality policy in relation to food safety.” But behind all these initiatives and regulations lies the routine practical work of testing foods. This is steadily moving over from human assessment to automated systems, which do not tire or take time off; which produce consistent results; and which are not subjective in their analysis.
The latest piece of instrumentation is a new colour vision detector which can help the food industry meet the new traceability regulations. Erwin Sick says its new CVS4 device is the first true optical character recognition sensor (OCR) on the market. It suits applications in the food and beverage market where expanding regulations call for better traceability on products. The vision sensor combines the simplicity of a sensor with the technology used in more sophisticated vision products. This keeps down costs while providing the ability to measure the areas colour, detecting the presence or absence of colour and identifying products based on colour.
