I Just Ate What Now? Food Fraud in North America
I was lucky enough to recently attend the North American Food Safety Summit in Toronto, ON. Some of the other companies represented at this summit were Walmart Canada, High Liner Foods, Longos and Trophy Foods. It was there that I learned about the biggest threat to food safety – food fraud.
Gordon Hayburn from Trophy Foods did a wonderful job introducing food fraud to the crowd.
“Last year, more olive oil and pure maple syrup were sold than there are trees to produce the product.”
Gordon let that sentence sink in and as he did it made me wonder… If I didn’t eat pure maple syrup, what did I eat instead?
Food fraud is defined as the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging; or false or misleading statements made about a product, for economic gain.
Food fraud is not a new idea. Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University and noted food safety expert, also spoke on this. He reminded the group that during the Roman Empire, wine was watered down, or combined with juices to make it more profitable. The same would apply in using other ingredients in bread making just to make more money.
Dr. Charlebois also informed the crowd that this is a major problem for large food manufacturers, as many of their ingredients come from places where they don’t have control of the facility. He gave the example of saffron (the world’s most expensive spice) which is commonly cut with crushed nuts and other spices. Honey is also high on the fraud list and will commonly have high fructose corn syrup mixed in. A troubling study in England found that only 25% of cheese and ham pizzas actually had ham and cheese on them.
Dr. Charlebois then shocked me and informed the crowd that it has been estimated that Canadians spend $3.6 billion annually on fake Italian food, or misrepresented Italian food. (Michigan State University’s Food Fraud Initiative (FFI) estimates fraud at nearly $50 billion annually in the US). A recent test done on fish in a market showed that almost 50% were improperly labeled, and the mislabeling only happened on higher priced fish that were in reality cheaper fish. He also brought up that local and organic claims at restaurants were found to be fraudulent. A well-known Toronto restaurant would charge high prices for local, organic food and very little was local or organic. Most was frozen or pre-bought. Even their custom handmade food products were frozen or premade.
Gordon agreed with Dr. Charlebois that it is hard for companies to catch this type of fraud. With low profit margins, manufacturers can only do so much testing on products. Plus the only true way to catch it is to do DNA analysis, which is slow and expensive and not feasible.
Gordon instead instituted a Vulnerability Assessment which allowed Trophy Foods to focus on items that are more susceptible to food fraud.
Scientific communities from around the world continue the task of creating handheld Metagenomics scanners which would be able to do almost instant DNA analysis on your food. Dr. Charlebois reported that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has recently partnered with the University of Guelph to research a portable scanning device that would be able to quickly and accurately identify the food in any product. His hopes were that this smart-phone-sized product would hopefully be available within the next decade. Until that unit is made, I’ll just keep wondering: what did I just eat?
About the Author
Brad Bradish
Brad Bradish, Health and Safety/Injury Risk Manager, is responsible for all aspects of health and safety and WSIB for SRG. Brad, a true Blue Jays fan, is a humorous and formidable trainer who has also done public speaking at conferences. When not watching the Jays, Brad is usually camping or towing his 2 boys down the Grand River with his wife in their kayaks.
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