Elliott Review: How Science Can Help to Prevent Food Adulteration
3 Sept 2014Thursday September 4th saw the publication of the Elliott Review, by Professor Chris Elliott of Queen’s University Belfast, UK.
Among the recommendations in the report, commissioned by the UK Government as a result of the Europe-wide horsemeat scandal, is a call for improved laboratory testing capacity and a standardized approach to testing a food's authenticity.
Science plays a fundamental role in protecting the public from food adulteration, and in our exclusive video interviews with leading food scientists around the world, we spoke to Junshi Chen, of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, about the melamine in milk scandal in China, and Hamad A Alkanhal, of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, about food fraud in the Middle East.
Mass Spectrometry
We also explore how mass spectrometry is used to identify food adulteration, with Paul Young, PhD, of Waters, while Professor Elliott, the author of this wide-ranging review, discusses why food fraud is such a serious global issue, how time-of-flight mass spectrometry can be used to identify fish species, how molecular fingerprinting can establish the geographical origin of cheese, and the future of mass spectrometry in food science.
For more exclusive videos, articles and interviews on the subject of food fraud and adulteration, don’t miss our special feature on Global Food Fraud and Safety.