A recent study of salmon sold at Seattle, Washington grocery stores and sushi restaurants found 18 percent of samples to be mislabeled overall, with one-third of “wild-caught” salmon sold at sushi establishments being mislabeled.
As a result of Operation OPSON 2024—an EU-wide coordinated effort targeting fraudulent and counterfeit foods—22,000 tons of food and 850,000 liters of beverages, totaling €91 million, were removed from the market.
Combining multiplex PCR and DNA barcoding, Chapman University researchers successfully detected fraudulent adulteration in half of ginseng supplement samples tested. With 28 percent of samples still unable to be identified, the researchers call for future studies combining DNA- and chemical-based testing methods.
A Codex committee has advanced work on Draft Guidelines on the Prevention and Control of Food Fraud, although consensus on parts of the guideline has not been reached.
In light of a recent investigation that found nearly half of honey imported to the EU is adulterated, UK researchers have demonstrated the promise of two innovative techniques—DNA barcoding and spatial offset Raman Spectroscopy—for detecting sugar adulterants in honey.
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) recently published the 2024 Food Crime Strategic Assessment. Since the last report in 2020, the UK food supply chain has faced significant disruptions, causing the food crime landscape to change and creating new opportunities for fraud.
A recent evaluation of the UK post-harvest seafood supply chain has pinpointed factors that leave the nation’s seafood supply vulnerable to food fraud, with third-party certification identified as the most important factor associated with a company’s level of defense against food crime.
The European Commission is taking strides to improve honey authenticity, including setting new origin labeling requirements, and the development of harmonized traceability requirements and improved methods of composition analysis and origin tracing. The Commission is assembling a group of experts called the “Honey Platform” to advise this work and is accepting applications.
A recent publication from the World Trade Organization (WTO)—written in collaboration with other expert groups that have expertise in food safety and food crime—explores the challenges of combating food fraud and illegal practices in food trade, and how the WTO rulebook can help address these challenges.
