Food fraud is not new to the food industry. During the Middle Ages, staple foods such as bread, meat and wine were being adulterated, leading to the implementation of legal regulations to ensure the quality and quantity of food products. Because of advanced technologies, though, most consumers believe that counterfeit food products are the exception.
Yet over the last few years, the evidence of fraudulent behaviour across the food spectrum has increased.
A recent study in the U.S. revealed a substitution rate of 57 per cent in meat products. Similar results in parts of Europe were found in a study involving sausages. In the U.K., 60 per cent of ham and cheese pizzas tested recently contained neither ham nor cheese.
The list of products includes spices, wines, oils and so on.
In Canada, recent studies have discovered that 25 to 70 per cent of seafood products sold in Canada are mislabelled due to counterfeiting somewhere along the supply chain. Chances are you have already unknowingly purchased a counterfeited food product at a restaurant, a well-known retailer or even at a high-end speciality store. What is more concerning, retailers and restaurateurs selling counterfeited items might not even know it.
National brands have registered deep concerns about food fraud. Many consumers purchasing products believed to be coming from exotic regions from around the world were actually purchasing local products.
For example, it is estimated that Canadians buy $3.6 billion worth of counterfeited Italian food products annually. Italy is a country known for its good food, so some suppliers package, repackage, present and market local food products in ways that make the product appear Italian.
Counterfeiting affects local products, too, which makes it more challenging for ethical local food producers and processors to make a decent living.
Canada is more than likely one major scandal away from witnessing a complete collapse of consumer trust. Efforts to curtail food fraud need to be taken, as the food retailing and service in Canada is a $200-billion business.
There are, however, measures that can be pursued. Canadians could expect the government to step in, but more inspections and regulations can only go so far. It would be impractical to expect regulators to effectively monitor everything every single day. And added monitoring would likely result in increased bureaucracy and, most certainly, higher food prices.
More can be done by industry. To validate food authenticity, modern food traceability systems will need to track food content and ingredients, not just packages. The application of anti-counterfeiting packaging in the food industry is an option that exists today.
With the rise of food prices in recent years, the business case for better, more sophisticated packaging is getting stronger. The global market for anti-counterfeiting packaging technologies in food is expected to increase by almost 15 per cent a year over the next decade.
In the near future, food might also be randomly checked for authenticity. One recently developed test using nuclear magnetic resonance can rapidly differentiate products. Some tests using that technology in Germany allowed researchers to differentiate organic versus non-organic tomatoes in more than 300 cases. It could potentially detect geographical origin, genuineness, substantial equivalence, shelf life and even freshness.
The technology, however, needs to be refined as it is not ready to be used commercially.
DNA analysis could be another option, although getting test results can be slow and costly. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency recently partnered with the University of Guelph to explore the use of this technology.
The most potent option for the future is portable technologies that consumers can use to protect themselves from food fraud — not an app, but an actual device the size of a smartphone. Universities and research centres are attempting to develop a tool that consumers can use safely at home or in stores in real time to authenticate labels and food content.
Through technological empowerment consumers could actually “police” the industry, so to speak. And when that day comes, the entire supply chain will need to discipline itself.
Eliminating food fraud will give the entire food industry a chance to become more sustainable.
Sylvain Charlebois is a professor with the Food Institute at the University of Guelph, Ont.
