ARE YOU A VICTIM OF FOOD FRAUD?

Whenever we go to purchase a food product, we expect that the product will deliver as per the labelled ingredients and nutritional values. Least we expect that the product will be adulterated or counterfeit.

Today is World Food Safety Day, a day observed?on 7th June every year. This year, the theme is "Prepare for Unexpected". Let’s understand a little more about the “unexpected challenge” to food safety. Let understand about the concept of “Food Fraud”.

Food Fraud implies that it can occur in the raw material, ingredient, final product or in the packaging as well as through false or misleading assertions about a product. A legitimate product produced in quantities more than what’s agreed and then sold illegitimately is also considered as food fraud. The most commonly done counterfeiting is by imitating the brand name, packaging concept, colour and odour of the food products to make a fast buck.

While food fraud is often motivated by profit, some forms of food fraud can also pose direct threat to the health of consumers. Apart from the adverse public health impact, food fraud plays a major role in negatively impacting consumers’ trust in food industries and government agencies. Blind spots in food supply chains can provide opportunities for individuals and business to conduct food fraud. Detecting food fraud is a challenge because consumers alone cannot detect them, and fraudsters are usually innovative in the ways they avoid detection. Even the best counterfeiting measure existing today i.e. hologram is easy to counterfeit.

Food fraud is conducted when there is a fraudulent and intentional substitution, dilution, or addition of harmful substances to raw material or food product, or misrepresentation of the material or product for financial gain (by increasing its apparent value or reducing its cost of production) or to cause harm to others (by malicious contamination).

Food fraud always concerns the quality of food. It can be related to either the product or the process affecting food safety. Similarly, health threat can be direct or indirect. For example,

• Addition of melamine to infant formula is a direct health threat to the infant consuming the adulterated food.
• Substitution of high quality cocoa paste which is rich in dietary fibre with low quality? cocoa paste meant for bulk production lowers the nutritional quality of the food and robs the consumer of the health benefits for which they paid is the indirect health threat.

A food fraud is said to be conducted if:

• There is intentional addition / substitution / dilution of ingredients in the final product or is the overrun produce that is sold illegitimately
• It violates food regulations
• Customers are deceived by feeding false/ misleading assertion of products
• For extra profit gains

Consumers have to be vigilant and need to be educated to distinguish between genuine and fake products to safeguard from food fraud. IFBA takes pride in pursuing this area of food safety.

SHILPA AGRAWAL, Director - SRA, Ind Food and Beverage Association