‘Near infinite’ possibilities for food fraud need interdisciplinary approach

23-Nov-2011 - Last updated on 23-Nov-2011 at 17:00 GMT

The pervasiveness of food fraud is almost infinite – and needs a continuing public-private partnership approach to tackle it, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Food Science.

Food fraud – often in the form of economically motivated adulteration of foods – is gaining recognition and concern as a food risk and it is the responsibility of both industry and government to deal with it, claim the paper’s authors, from Michigan State University’s Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program.

“Economically motivated adulteration may be just that—economically motivated—but the food-related public health risks are often more risky than traditional food safety threats because the contaminants are unconventional,” they wrote. “Current intervention systems are not designed to look for a near inﬁnite number of potential contaminants.”

The authors advocate a multi-disciplinary approach to tackling food fraud, including examining criminology and behavioral science to provide insight into the motivations for seeking food fraud opportunities.

“Deterring food fraud requires interdisciplinary research combining criminology with other ﬁelds, such as food safety, public health, packaging, food science, food law, supply chain management, consumer behavior, social anthropology, and political science,” they wrote.

US Pharmacopeia (USP) is one organization in this field that also supports a multi-stakeholder approach, involving industry, regulators and standards-setting organizations. It is the non-governmental, non-profit authority behind the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC), a compendium of ingredient monographs and tests to ensure the quality, purity and safety of more than 1,100 food ingredients.

USP’s director of food standards, Markus Lipp, told FoodNavigator-USA earlier this year that “the challenge is to develop specific markers combined with absence of other compounds” rather than to simply go looking for particular contaminants.

“Adulteration is often a very dynamic and innovative field in itself,” he said. “…Let’s not forget that adulterators go to conferences too. Their perspective is: how can I bypass these tools? They stay abreast of the latest developments.”

The authors of this latest paper acknowledged the role of the FCC in dealing with economically motivated adulteration, adding that all standards-based initiatives face the challenge “of an emerging, interdisciplinary threat that requires nontraditional disciplines to address the root motivation and develop preventative measures”.