The prevention and detection of food fraud remains a difficult problem, despite recent developments in regulatory and audit requirements.
In 2012, the United States Pharmacopoeia Convention created a database of food ingredient fraud. The objective of this research was to report on updates made to the database structure and to provide an updated analysis of food fraud records. The restructured database was relational and included four tables: ingredients, adulterants, adulteration records, and references. Four types of adulteration records were created to capture the variety of information that can be found in public food fraud reports. The information was acquired and extracted from peer-reviewed scientific literature, media publications, regulatory reports, court records, trade association reports and other public sources covering the period from 1980 to 2022.
Over a data entry period of nearly seven years, they were entered 15,575 recordscoming primarily from peer-reviewed literature and media reports.
The percentage of records that included at least one potentially harmful adulterant ranged from 34% to 60%, depending on the type of record.
Ingredients with the highest number of inference episodes and records included cow’s milk, extra virgin olive oil, honey, beef, and chili powder.
Ingredient groups with the highest number of episodes and inference records included dairy ingredients, seafood products, meat and poultry products, herbs, spices and seasonings, milk and cream, and alcoholic beverages.
These data support the thesis that Food fraud presents a public health risk that should continue to be addressed by food safety systems around the world.
Bibliography
Karen D. Everstine, Henry B. Chin, Fernando A. Lopes, Jeffrey C. Moore, Database of Food Fraud Records: Summary of Data from 1980 to 2022, Journal of Food Protection, Volume 87, Issue 3, 2024, 100227, ISSN 0362-028X
