Innovation and Future Trends in Food Manufacturing and Supply Chain Technologies

Craig Leadley, Craig Leadley

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781782424703
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Ingegneria meccanica

Innovation and Future Trends in Food Manufacturing and Supply Chain Technologies focuses on emerging and future trends in food manufacturing and supply chain technologies, examining the drivers of change and innovation in the food industry and the current and future ways of addressing issues such as energy reduction and rising costs in food manufacture.

Part One looks at innovation in the food supply chain, while Part Two covers emerging technologies in food processing and packaging. Subsequent sections explore innovative food preservation technologies in themed chapters and sustainability and future research needs in food manufacturing.

• Addresses issues such as energy reduction and rising costs in food manufacture
• Assesses current supply chain technologies and the emerging advancements in the field, including key chapters on food processing technologies
• Covers the complete food manufacturing scale, compiling significant research from academics and important industrial figures

Part One

Supply Chain Developments

Outline

1. Food Fraud and Authenticity: Emerging Issues and Future Trends

2. The Role of Information Technology Developments in Food Supply Chain Integration and Monitoring

1

Food Fraud and Authenticity

Emerging Issues and Future Trends

Annemieke M. Pustjens¹, Yannick Weesepoel¹, and Saskia M. van Ruth^{1,2 1}RIKILT, Institute of Food Safety, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands ²Food Quality and Design Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Food fraud is a significant and growing problem, driven by globalization, economic opportunity, and the low probability and severity of punishment. Although food fraud is economically motivated, it may result in serious health consequences. Therefore, emerging food fraud issues are described in this chapter, including the usage of food fraud databases. Analytical verification of food fraud and food authentication is needed to support proper food safety management systems. However, due to time and money constraints, only a restricted number of samples can be analyzed in a laboratory. For analysis outside the laboratory, rapid, nondestructive, nontargeted methods are needed. This can be either handheld equipment for food safety inspectors or in-line equipment for the food manufacturers.

Keywords

Food adulteration; Food authenticity; Food fraud; Fraud deterrence; Prospective

1.1. Introduction

Food fraud is a collective term that covers 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,” as defined by the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP). The deliberate substitution or addition of a fraudulent component to a finished product is called adulteration. This is the most common type of food fraud. Although food fraud or economically motivated adulteration has financial gain as the main goal, adulteration may result in serious public health consequences when the adulterant is toxic or allergenic (Everstine et al., 2013). Food fraud is a significant and growing problem, driven by globalization, economic opportunity, and the low probability and severity of punishment (Kennedy, 2012). Therefore, in this chapter, the occurrence of different types of food fraud, vulnerability of the supply chain, analytical verification within a laboratory (as has been the focus in recent years), and emerging handheld and in-line screening equipment will be discussed. Such an overview will help to gain more insight in the vulnerable products and processes of the food chain and to evaluate whether the appropriate analytical and screening methods are available in defense of food fraud in the future.

1.2. Background

1.2.1. Types of Food Fraud

Different types of food fraud can be distinguished (Figure 1.1) and will be discussed in the paragraph below with some examples.

1.2.1.1. Composition

Most of the types of food fraud influence the composition of a product, e.g., substitution, dilution, unapproved enhancements, and concealment. Changing the composition of a food product can be either done by the addition of poor-quality own-product material, product-foreign material, or adulteration with other constituents.

Figure 1.1 Food fraud terminology. Adapted from Food Fraud Think Tank (2013).

Food producers try to gain more money by adding cheaper nonauthentic ingredients in more expensive or authentic products like honey (Strayer et al., 2014) or fruit juices (Ehling and Cole, 2011). Another form of adding product-foreign material is the addition of melamine to enhance the apparent protein content (Domingo et al., 2014).

Adulteration with constituents include, for example, diluting milk with water (Kasemsumran et al., 2007). Also in poultry, meat, or fish, water can be added. For poultry, the water/protein ratio is controlled, therefore fraudsters mask the addition of water by the addition of protein or phosphate salts, for example (Ballin, 2010). Hamburgers in Mexico were found to contain soy protein, while in 30% of the cases this was not mentioned on the label (Ballin, 2010).

1.2.1.2. Products of Plant Origin: Cultivar and Variety Identification

Certain food and feed products may possibly originate from different botanical origin, which influences their applicability in food and feed. For example, dried distillers grains with solubles, which are a by-product from the bioethanol production and mainly used in animal feed, can originate from different cereals, such as maize and wheat. The large variation in the composition can contribute to imbalanced feed formulations. Therefore, it is important to control its composition (Tres et al., 2014). Also, molecular biological methods can be used to differentiate types of cereals in food. For example, DNA sequencing can distinguish between the protected Farro della Garfagnana (emmer) and common bread wheat (Prins et al., 2010). Biological methods can also be used to evaluate whether plant material, like soy beans, maize, rice, and sugar beet, is genetically modified or not (Querci et al., 2010).

1.2.1.3. Products of Animal Origin: Species Identification

Authenticity investigations revealed that in certain countries for 15–39% of the meat products, like hamburgers and sausages, animal species was not declared on the label (Ballin, 2010). Also, more expensive, more authentic meat can be (partly) substituted with cheaper, less authentic meat tissues or species. For example, different cuts of beef that were interchanged can be analytically distinguished (Al-Jowder et al., 1999). The horsemeat scandal is a more recent example where beef was (partly) substituted with horsemeat for economic gain (Zając et al., 2014).

1.2.1.4. Geographical Origin

Geographical origin has become of higher importance for economic and safety reasons, but also in view of sustainability issues. Food products are sometimes mislabeled; therefore, analytical methods should be developed to verify the geographical origin of a food product. This is often done in a nontargeted approach, for example, the verification of the geographical origin of olive oil by the analysis of the volatile components by proton transfer reaction–mass spectrometry (PTR–MS) or the fatty acid profile by gas chromatography (GC) (Araghipour et al., 2008; Ruiz-Samblás et al., 2012, 2013).

Counterfeiting occurs with products with European Union protected designation of origin, like the typical cheese from the Dutch city of Leiden. In this case, the typical cheese can be distinguished from other (cheaper) imitation cheeses in a nontargeted approach by the analysis of the volatile components by PTR–MS (Galle et al., 2011). In the case of fish, DNA is extracted from the microorganisms present. The variety of microorganisms is determined by the geographical origin of the fish (El Sheikha and Montet, 2014).

1.2.1.5. Production System

Food can be produced in different ways, e.g., conventional, organic, Halal/Kosher, sustainable, considering animal welfare, and rainforest friendly. Consumers want to be assured that the product they buy is produced in the way that is stated on the package and that the extra money they pay for a specific production method is appropriate. Methods have, for example, been developed to distinguish conventional from organic dairy products (Capuano et al., 2014a,b), conventional from organic meat (Castellini et al., 2002), organic from conventional eggs (van Ruth et al., 2011), and to distinguish wild from farmed fish (Capuano et al., 2013). For the assurance of Halal food production several methods have been described to verify the origin of animals, animal products and proteins, and the presence of alcohol (van der Spiegel et al., 2012).

1.2.1.6. Processing

During production of a food product, it often undergoes some kind of processing. For example, meat or fish that has been frozen and thawed but is sold as being fresh (Uddin et al., 2005). Another example is coffee, from which the beans have undergone an extra processing step, like in the expensive Indonesian Kopi Luwak, which can be distinguished from normal espresso (Özdestan et al., 2013). Also, cheeses that are made from raw milk instead of thermally treated milk can be distinguished based on the available lysine content. A novel amperometric sensor has been developed for rapid detection of raw milk cheeses and their imitations (Ciriello et al., 2015).

1.2.2. Food Fraud Occurrence and Usage of Databases

Since the 1990s, the European food industry has enco...