In new research published in the April
Journal of Food Science, analyses of the first known public database compiling
reports on food fraud and economically motivated adulteration in food highlight
the most fraud-prone ingredients in the food supply; analytical detection
methods; and the type of fraud reported.
Based
on a review of records from scholarly journals, the top seven adulterated
ingredients in the database are olive oil, milk, honey, saffron, orange juice,
coffee, and apple juice. The database was created by the U.S. Pharmacopeial
Convention (USP), a nonprofit scientific organization that develops standards
to help ensure the identity, quality and purity of food ingredients, dietary
supplements and pharmaceuticals. USP's food ingredient standards are published
in the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC) compendium.
The new
database provides baseline information to assist interested parties in
assessing the risks of specific products. It includes a total of 1,305 records
for food fraud based on a total of 660 scholarly, media and other publicly
available reports. Records are divided by scholarly research (1,054 records)
and media reports (251 records). Researchers are Drs. Jeffrey C. Moore (lead
author) and Markus Lipp of USP, and Dr. John Spink of Michigan State
University.
Food
fraud was recently defined in a report commissioned by the Department of
Homeland Security and funded by the National Center for Food Protection and
Defense (University of Minnesota) as a collective term that encompasses the
deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food
ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a
product for economic gain.
A more
specific type of fraud, intentional or economically motivated adulteration of
food ingredients has been defined by USP's Expert Panel on Food Ingredient
Intentional Adulterants as the fraudulent addition of nonauthentic substances
or removal or replacement of authentic substances without the purchaser's
knowledge for economic gain of the seller.
"This
database is a critical step in protecting consumers," said Dr. Spink.
"Food fraud and economically motivated adulteration have not received the
warranted attention given the potential danger they present. We recently
defined these terms [see the Journal of Food Science, November 2011] and now we
are defining the scope and scale. As many do not believe a concept or risk
exists if it does not appear in a scholarly journal, we believe that publication
of this paper in the Journal of Food Science will allow us to advance the
science of food fraud prevention."
While
traditionally considered primarily an economic issue and less a consumer safety
threat, authors of the paper, Development and Application of a Database of Food
Ingredient Fraud and Economically Motivated Adulteration from 1980 to 2010,
defined empirically that in some ways food fraud may be more risky than
traditional threats to the food supply.
The
adulterants used in these activities often are unconventional and designed to
avoid detection through routine analyses. Melamine, for example, was considered
neither a potential contaminant nor an adulterant in the food supply before the
episodes of adulteration of pet food in 2007 and infant formula and other milk
products in 2008 (with tainted products still appearing sporadically today,
principally in China).
Although,
as records from this database indicate, melamine was used as an adulterant to
mimic protein as early as 1979; however, this remained virtually unknown until
2007. Hence, testing for melamine was not included in routine quality assurance
or quality control analyses.
Additionally,
current food protection systems are not designed to look for the nearly
infinite number of potential adulterants that may show up in the food supply.
"Food
ingredients and additives present a unique risk because they are used in so
many food products and often do not have visual or functional properties that
enable easy discrimination from other similar ingredients or adulterants
throughout the supply chain," the paper states. Glycerin, for example, is
a sweet, clear, colorless liquid that is difficult to differentiate by sight or
smell from other sweet, clear, colorless liquid syrups -- including toxic
diethylene glycol, which in the past has been substituted for glycerin with
deadly consequences. Diethylene glycol has been fraudulently added to wines,
and also used as an adulterant of glycerin used in pharmaceuticals.
In
addition to identifying specific food ingredients and food categories
vulnerable to adulteration, the researchers also analyzed the types of
analytical detection methods used to discover the fraud, as well as the type of
fraud using three categories: replacement, addition or removal. The authors
found 95 percent of records involved replacement -- an authentic material
replaced partially or completely by another, less expensive substitute. An
example is the partial substitution of olive oil with hazelnut oil. Other
examples include potentially harmful substitution of toxic Japanese star anise
for Chinese star anise (a common spice used in foods), and the partial
replacement of low-quality spices with lead tetraoxide or lead chromate to
imitate the color of higher-quality spices.
Utility of Database
The
database provides information that can be useful in evaluating current and
emerging risks for food fraud. In addition to providing a baseline
understanding of the vulnerability of individual ingredients, the database
offers information about potential adulterants that could reappear in the
supply chain for particular ingredients. For example, records in the database
regarding melamine as an adulterant for high-protein-content ingredients date
back to 1979.
Speaking
to that example, the paper notes, "Perhaps if this information had been
readily available to risk assessors before the 2007 and 2008 incidents of
melamine adulteration and wheat gluten and milk powders, it could have helped
risk assessors anticipate these adulteration possibilities." This
information also could have stimulated research aimed at developing new methods
to measure protein content, which could signal adulteration with melamine and
other unexpected constituents -- an effort that has only recently gained substantial
interest.
Another
practical application of the database involves analytical testing strategies to
detect food fraud. A commonly used strategy at present is testing for the
absence of specific adulterants -- an approach that excels at detecting known
adulterants at very low levels but has the critical limitation of not
necessarily being able to detect unknown adulterants.
An
alternative strategy is compendial testing (via FCC and other sources) for the
identity, authenticity and purity of a food ingredient (i.e., what should be
present and in what quantity instead of what should not be present). While this
testing may not always be capable of detecting adulterants at trace levels, it
is capable of detecting both known and unknown adulterants. "Well-designed
compendial testing approaches can be very powerful tool for guarding against
food fraud," said Dr. Moore. "Their potential to detect both unknown
and known adulterants is a significant benefit in an environment where no one
knows and is worried about what harmful adulterant criminals will use to create
the next generation of fake food ingredients." The USP Food Fraud Database
is publicly accessible at www.foodfraud.org
.
Source:
US Pharmacopeia
No comments:
Post a Comment