So, you think this is
olive oil, right?
Wrong. Well, maybe some of it is, but this is actually
a classic example of food fraud.
Extra virgin olive oils are being switched out with
cheap ones And fraudulent to sell something labeled as
something else. Why is this fish being mislabeled?
Your parmesan cheese products do not contain any
Parmesan cheese.
There was no one brand that stood out as completely
safe.
Wow, so we can't eat anything.
I guarantee you, any time a product can be passed off as
something more expensive, it will be.
It's that simple.
Counterfeits, dilution, substitution and
mislabeling. Food fraud not only harms consumers
wallets, it puts their health and safety at risk.
We might not know the overall impact of food fraud
because so much of what fraudsters do is hidden from
us and has been for centuries.
Some estimates say food fraud affects at least 1% of
the global food industry, at a cost as high as $40
billion a year, according to the Food and Drug
Administration.
Grocery Manufacturers of America estimated that 10%
of the commercially available food in the United
States is adulterated.
That's one in ten.
It means if you're not on that eight item or less
checkout line, you've got something in your cart when
you leave the supermarket that's probably bogus
Here's how and why fake food sits secretly in our
kitchen cabinets.
According to the FDA, food fraud is considered
economically motivated adulteration or EMA.
It's a monetary impact to the consumer and to the food
manufacturers, but it's also a potential public
safety, public health impact.
It robs us of nutrients and can kill people and has
done.
Larry Olmstead researched food fraud for years and
published his book Real Food Fake Food in 2016.
As I worked on this book, my definition of fake food
became any time what you buy is not what you think
you're buying; doesn't really matter whether it's
legal or illegal, it's where you're you're being
tricked. You're buying something that's not what
you think it is.
The worst offenders can include seafood, meat,
dairy, honey, alcohol, spices.
The fraud happens more with more expensive foods.
Totally make sense, right?
There's a higher margin.
Take your extra virgin olive oil as an example.
Fraud usually occurs here when a cheaper oil is added
to the more expensive oil, and the label still reads
100% extra virgin olive oil.
That's food fraud.
Olive oil has been adulterated for thousands of
years because it is of high value and it is sought out.
They might flavor it with beta carotene and maybe
color it with a little chlorophyl to make it a
little more green. And so then you've got a lower
quality, cheaper oil.
So both of these olive oils I got at the grocery store
and both of them are the store brand, but one cost
way more than the other.
This one had a label of 100% Mediterranean blend of
extra virgin olive oil.
So the olives were sourced from a bunch of different
European countries and it said it was packed in Italy
and there was no expiration date.
And when I purchased this one, this one was a 100%
California extra virgin olive oil, first pressed,
cold pressed, unfiltered, no artificial colors,
preservatives or flavors.
And this one had an expiration date.
It said that these olives were harvested in October,
November 2022 and that it would be good on your shelf
until August 2024.
And it was much more expensive, roughly twice as
much as this olive oil.
And this one had way more information about where this
olive oil came from.
Now, let's look at the spice market as another one that's
vulnerable to fraud.
Think of an expensive spice like saffron.
This tiny amount cost me $20 at the store.
Saffron can be bulked up with some other material
like plant stems and sold as the same, according to
the FDA.
Popular spices like basil and chili powder from a
range of different brands.
Anything that's kind of colored orange, brown and
ground up can be passed off as turmeric.
It's the ultimate bait and switch.
And then there's fish.
The FDA says seafood fraud can occur when a less
expensive species of fish is substituted for a more
expensive species.
After all, it's kind of hard to know what fish you
are buying, right?
If you're experienced chef or fishmonger, you can look
at like a red snapper fillet and tell whether it's
red snapper. But, 99% of consumers can't.
Most of the fish we eat is white fish.
Every fillet looks pretty much the same, which is why
there are so much substitution. The FDA is
mandated by law to inspect 2% of the imported
seafood, which is, I think, a very, very low bar.
In fact, the US imports as much as 85% of its fish.
The federal fisheries enforcement is serious
business. Agents from NOAA and US Customs
tear open a container filled with frozen fish from
Thailand. They're looking for fraud.
First, it's important to understand the matrix that
food fraud lives in.
There's intentional and unintentional types of food
risk. Unintentional risks include food safety and
quality, like accidental foodborne illnesses.
CDC estimates about 50 million people a year
contract a foodborne illness.
Only 20%, one in five of those, can be identified.
So there's 40 million people a year getting sick
from something they ate that we don't know what it
is. And a good guess would be that fraud has something
to do with that.
Then there's intentional.
That's where food fraud is alongside food defense.
The difference is fraud is motivated by economic gain
and defense is motivated by harm.
If you have a ton of coffee and you can turn that into
1,2 tons by adding some cheap filler to it, you've
just increased your profits by 20%.
And a lot of these products pass through a lot of hands.
They go from small growers to big trucks to tankers to
boats to processing plants.
It's not necessarily like this big company that's
selling you coffee that's ripping you off.
It can happen in a lot of ways along the way.
Even the FDA says it can't estimate how often this
fraud happens or its economic impact.
Over the last ten years, the most common fraud
committed is lying about an animal's origin and dilution
or substitution.
Both ranking at 16% of incidents recorded.
Dilution and substitution are exactly what they sound
like. Perhaps somewhere along the supply chain, the
real expensive process of refining something like
fresh olives is ignored.
Maybe a little canola oil is added instead.
Then there's the removal of value when an ingredient or
part of a food is intentionally left out,
taken out or substituted altogether.
And that substitute can be a non-food substance.
That's the 14% of the recorded food fraud
incidents using non-food substances.
The pandemic has given us a chance to focus on supply
chains and forced us to.
For example, during the pandemic, labeling fraud
really spiked in 2021 to 21% of the types of fraud
that were committed and recorded.
You know, if we knew all about it, why hasn't it been
solved? The key was we weren't focusing on
prevention. Food fraud prevention, if we do it
right, is boring.
We're the fire marshal checking exits and smoke
alarms, not not catching the bad guys.
The US has laws in place to ensure food safety.
That's part of what the FDA does today.
Basically, all food fraud, all product fraud, is
illegal under one law or another somehow.
Before the FDA existed, manufacturers could add
basically whatever they wanted into the food.
Think of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
That book was published in 1906.
That same year, food safety regulation began with the
Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act,
which outlawed adulterated and misbranded food items to
protect consumers.
This ultimately led to the creation of the FDA.
The Food and Drug Administration.
Since then, laws have hit the books to further food
safety protocols like the Food Safety Modernization
Act signed into law in 2011.
And then horsemeat.
The fraud was on a grand scale.
Horsemeat was blended into beef in the UK across Europe
and.
Sold to unsuspecting supermarkets for a period of
eight months in 2012.
The scandal was exposed.
And that was a great wake up call.
Some companies purposely mislead on labels.
Prosecuting the fraudsters committing the crime can be
tricky. After all, they're purposely trying to avoid
that detection. But criminals are caught.
Like in 2016.
Product labeled market pantry, 100% Parmesan
contained cheaper Swiss and cheddar cheese and an
organic filler called cellulose, which can be
derived from wood pulp.
Castle cheese was caught adding wood pulp and cheddar
to its grated parmesan that they sold as 100% parmesan
cheese.
The FDA does allow fillers like cellulose in cheese,
but it can only make up 4% of the total ingredients.
The president of the company got a $5,000 fine, 200 hours
of community service and three years of probation.
For its part, the Food and Drug Administration says its
job is to make sure food doesn't hurt you, not to
police the labels.
Fraud is tough for the consumer in terms of food
because it's difficult.
They don't have a lab in their kitchen.
The food fraud prevention think tank has a five
question survey consumers can use when shopping for
food. One What type of product is it?
Be aware of product that you put on you, in you or plug
in the wall to quality.
Can you recognize the difference between the
products? If you can't easily tell the difference
that makes you more vulnerable to fraud.
If I drink scotch, I couldn't tell if it's a
difference between a $50 bottle and a $5,000 bottle.
So I know I could be deceived at that point.
Three. Supplier Do you know the retailer or the
supplier? And do you trust them?
So when you turn that box of cereal or a bottle of juice
over and read the back, there's a lot of information
there that's required by law that's helpful to the
consumer.
And then question four are you buying this item online?
The supply chain can be shrouded in more mystery
when shopping online.
So how did you find out about this website?
Is it reputable?
But it depends on how you find that supplier.
And finally, five: complain.
Okay, it's not a question, but the food fraud
prevention think tank says if the retailer is legit,
they will want to know.
I think manufacturers can be the victims as well.
The FDA also relies on consumers reports.
In recent decades, fraudsters have gotten more
sophisticated in the techniques they use to fake
the food products.
And that means that our detection methods and our
test methods and standards have to be better at
detecting fraud.
That's why the U.S.
Pharmacopeia Convention provides a framework for
organizations to detect its vulnerabilities.
We have food fraud mitigation guidance, so it
is a supply chain risk management tool to really
take a look at which ones are the more risky products
suspected to be adulterated.
Sometimes it feels like this is not that big of a deal,
but the more fraudsters are able to achieve, the more we
end up paying in the end.
As consumers.
These cases rarely result in criminal penalties.
If you want to be like a drug dealer and import
heroin and you get arrested on a large scale, you're
going to go to jail. But if you can make $80 million
importing adulterated honey, and then you're going to get
a slap on the wrist and some fines, why wouldn't you
do food instead of drugs if there's no basically
criminal downside to it?
So as long as we don't take it seriously, why should the
perpetrators take it seriously?
What we want is the food industry just to be focused
on making food and not have to worry about looking over
our shoulder, checking different suppliers.
And that's going to impact more food being produced,
better food, safer food, less expensive food.
There's plenty of things for us to worry about in the
world today, and food fraud should not be one of those.