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.
