Shilpa Agrawal, Director – Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, Ind Food and Beverage Association (IFBA)
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. Let’s understand a little more about the “unexpected challenge” to food safety. Here we explore the multifaceted strategies and approaches essential for effectively handling the food fraud crisis.
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. In an interconnected global market, ensuring the authenticity and safety of our food supply has become an increasingly complex challenge. Food fraud, the deliberate misrepresentation of food products for economic gain, threatens consumer health, undermines trust in the food industry, and poses regulatory challenges worldwide.
What entails Food Fraud?
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 threats 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.
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